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BERLIN
-- Klaas Carel Faber, one of the world's most-wanted Nazi
war criminals, has died at age 90 after decades of living
free in Germany, which rejected repeated attempts to extradite
him to face prison for murder and collaboration.
Faber, a Dutch native who fled to Germany in 1952 after being convicted of war
crimes, died Thursday in Ingolstadt, his wife, Jacoba, said
Saturday.
Faber -- whom the Simon Wiesenthal
Center last year placed at No. 3 on its list of most-wanted
Nazi criminals -- was convicted in 1947 of involvement in
22 murders and for aiding the Netherlands' Nazi occupiers
during World War II. He was sentenced to death, but that
was later commuted to life in prison.
In 1952, he escaped from prison and
fled to Germany. He obtained German citizenship in 1954,
and that saved him from at least four attempts to extradite
him over the decades.
In the most recent attempt, German
authorities refused a request last year from the Netherlands.
In January, Ingolstadt Prosecutor Helmut Walter said he had
filed a motion to have Faber serve his sentence in a German
prison. But Faber was free at the time of his death.
Dutch prosecutors have said he was
convicted for killings at three Dutch locations in 1944-45,
including six at the Westerbork transit camp, where thousands
of Dutch Jews, including Anne Frank, were held before being
sent to labor or death camps in eastern Europe.
According to the Wiesenthal Center,
Faber volunteered for Hitler's SS, a paramilitary organization
loyal to Nazi ideology.
He also served with the Sicherheitsdienst,
the Nazi internal intelligence agency, and an SS unit code-named
Silbertanne, or Silver Fir, which exacted reprisals for attacks
by the Dutch resistance on collaborators.
More Details: Nazi war criminals
The top Nazi war criminals on the
Simon Wiesenthal Center's 2012 most-wanted list are:
• Alois Brunner, an Austrian who was
Adolph Eichmann's assistant, condemned in absentia in 1954
for sending 140,000 European Jews to the gas chambers. He
would be 100 if he is still alive.
• Dr. Aribert Heim, an Austrian doctor
accused of torturing and killing inmates at Mauthausen concentration
camp in Austria. He would be 97 if still alive.
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