VIENNA (AFP)---Top Nazi war crimes suspect Alois Brunner
was close to being extradited to former East Germany when
the fall of the Berlin Wall put a halt on proceedings, an
Austrian weekly said Saturday.
Based on unpublished documents from the former East German Stasi secret police,
communist East Germany (GDR) negotiated with Syria in the
late 1980s to have the Austrian Brunner extradited and arrested
in Berlin, the Profil news weekly said in a statement.
Brunner, one of the most wanted Nazi
war criminals, is believed to have been responsible for the
deportation of over 100,000 Jews to Nazi deaths camps during
World War II.
"Brunner, Alois, will likely
be extradited from Syria to the GDR," read a Stasi document from 1988, cited by Profil in its next edition to be published
Monday.
Another document from April 1989,
quoting former East German foreign minister Oskar Fischer,
went on: "(East German leader) Comrade Erich Honecker has arranged for the GDR general
prosecutor to initiate the necessary measures to prepare
for criminal proceedings against Brunner in the event that
he arrives in the GDR."
The weekly also interviewed Nazi hunter
Beate Klarsfeld, who along with her husband Serge first proposed
an extradition.
"We suggested to the GDR
that Brunner be arrested in Damascus and flown to Berlin," she told the weekly.
However, the fall of the Berlin Wall
in November 1989 severed contacts between the two regimes
and put paid to the extradition plans, according to the weekly.
Brunner, a close associate of Adolf
Eichmann, is seen as "the most important unpunished Nazi war criminal who may still be alive," according to the Simon Wiesenthal Center.
The Austrian, who would be 99 if he
still lives, fled to Syria in 1954, but was last sighted
there in 2001, prompting rumours he may already be dead.
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