Athens / Greece (RNC Correspondent) 21.01.1997

Greece says it has evidence that Alois Brunner, the world’s most-wanted Nazi war criminal, is hiding in Syria.

Brunner. a senior Nazi SS officer and elusive fugitive for years, is accused of directing the deportation and killing of at least 130,000 Jews from European countries, including Greece, during World War II. Government spokesman Dimitris Reppas said Greece, which has close ties with Syria, has evidence that Brunner, 84, is in hiding in Syria. He refused to elaborate, or say where the evidence come from.

Previous reports have said Brunner has been living in Syria since 1954. Syrian officials have always denied this, and they denied Tuesdays report as well.

More than 55.000 Greek Jews, or nearly 98 percent of the Jewish population in the northern port city of Salonica, died in concentration camps. But reppas said Tuesday that even though Brunner is implicated in many of those deaths, Greece could not request Brunner’s extradition because it transferred its extradition rights to Germany in 1959. ’’ Still, we would like to see Brunner pay for the gross crimes he committed,’’ Reppas said. Brunner is wanted by Austria, France, Israel, the former Czechoslovakia and Germany, where a $345.000 reward has been posted for his capture. All other top Nazis have died or been arrested. Adlof Eichmann, Hitlers main henchman for the Holocaust, was executed in Israel in 1962.