Brunner, long-sought Nazi, is dead, researchers say

JERUSALEM, Dec. 1 (UPI) -- The chief investigator pursuing Nazi war criminal Alois Brunner, says he is confident Brunner died four years ago in Syria.

Brunner was among the world's most wanted fugitives and the subject of research by Efraim Zuroff, director of the Simon Wiesenthal Center's office in Jerusalem. Zuroff told the British Broadcasting Co. he is "99 percent sure" Brunner died in Syria in 2010 at the age of 98, adding that new evidence reveals he was unrepentant of his Nazi past and was buried in 2010 in an undisclosed location in Damascus.

A German intelligence officer whom Zuroff called "a reliable source in our eyes" informed the Wiesenthal Center of Brunner's death, but because of the civil war in Syria, no forensic authentication was possible. "I took his name off the list" of Nazis still at large, Zuroff said.

Brunner's only known interview came in 1985 with a German magazine, in which he said, "My only regret is that I didn't murder more Jews." He was regarded as a close assistant to Adolph Eichmann, a chief organizer of the Nazi Holocaust, who was tried and executed in 1962. Brunner was responsible for the deportation of hundreds of thousands of Jews, from Austria, Greece, France and Slovakia to concentration camps. He was tried by France in absentia and sentenced to die in 1954, and survived at least two assassination attempts by Israel's secret service.

He reportedly served as an adviser on torture methods to Syrian President Hafez al-Assad in the 1950s, the New York Times said.