The Simon Wiesenthal Center says it has evidence that Alois Brunner, the world's most-wanted Nazi fugitive, died a free man in Syria four years ago, protected by the regime. Brunner, right-hand man to Adolf Eichmann, was responsible for the deportation of over 120,000 Jews to death camps. The Wiesenthal Center said that Brunner lived in Damascus for decades under the pseudonym Georg Fischer. The Syrian government under Hafez Assad refused repeated requests to extradite him. The Center found that Brunner worked as a security adviser to Rifaat al-Assad—Hafez Assad's brother and uncle of the ruling Bashar Assad. In this capacity he schooled the Syrian regime in interrogation and torture techniques.

Brunner was condemned to death in absentia after being found guilty in France of crimes against humanity in 1954. He was twice thought to have been wounded by mail bombs attributed to Mossad, Israel's spy agency. In his last known interview, in 1987, he told the Chicago Sun-Times that his Jewish victims "deserved to die because they were the devil's agents and human garbage." He had "no regrets and would do it again."

Efraim Zuroff, the Wiesenthal Center's chief Nazi hunter, said that the Syrian civil war made it impossible to confirm Brunner's death, but that there was no doubt in his mind. "I took his name off the list," Zuroff said. (Ya Libnan, Dec. 2)

We are well aware of the problems with the Simon Wiesenthal Center, but they can presumably be trusted on this question. The news of Brunner's death came days after The Rwar Report blog provided historical background on the fascist roots of the Assad regime, and noted Brunner's role as an advisor to successive Syrian governments—starting in 1954, when the Syrian Socialist Nationalist Party (SSNP) was in power. Like the Assad dynasty's Baath Party, the SSNP explicitly sought inspiration in the Nazi Party. The piece noted the irony that the US renditioned prisoners to Syria to be tortured by Nazi-trained interrogators, while idiotic psuedo-leftists in the West are now rallying around Assad.

Meanwhile, The Independent reports that Nick Griffin, erstwhile leader of the fascistic British National Party (BNP), was in Syria over the weekend as the only British representative at an Assad-hosted anti-terrorist conference (sic!). We do wonder how the idiot-leftists manage to square it...