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A Nazi Taught Interrogation Tactics to Syrians and Egyptians

(New/Lines) Ziad Khoury - As teenagers in Damascus in the 1980s, we were kept away from an elegant residential building by plainclothes security personnel. There were whispers that an "important" German fugitive lived on the second floor. In 1943, Nazi officer Alois Brunner was put in charge of the Drancy camp outside Paris, the last stop for Jews before they were sent to the gas chambers. He had been the right-hand man to Adolf Eichmann. By some estimates, Brunner was responsible for the arrest and torture of 47,000 Jews in Austria, 44,000 in Greece, 23,000 in France and 14,000 in Slovakia. After the war, Brunner made his way to Egypt, where he was the guest of then-president Gamal Abdel Nasser, and was hired by the Egyptian military as a "consultant." Relocating to Syria, the head of Syrian military intelligence asked him to train Syrian troops in interrogation methods, espionage and torture. Shortly after arriving in Syria, Brunner survived two assassination attempts by letter bombs - one sent by the IDF in 1961 and the other sent by the Mossad in 1980. He lost three fingers and an eye but went on to live the rest of his days in Damascus. The BBC reported that he died in 2010.
2022-08-11 00:00:00
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