For many years, the Syrian secret services cooperated with former Nazi officials, as well as the East German secret service Stasi
The pictures on the internet of the release of prisoners of the notorious Sednaya prison in Syria they are horrible. Around the world they shoot footage of bony prisoners in overcrowded cells, corpses of torture victims or mountains of shoes in prison halls. According to Amnesty International, up to 15,000 people were executed in the Assad regime’s detention centers between 2011 and 2015.
On social media, some users associate the regime in Syria with Adolf Hitler’s German National Socialists and in particular with Alois Brunerwho is said to have fled to Syria after the end of World War II. Brunner is considered the right-hand man of Adolf Eichmann, who orchestrated the extermination of six million Jews. The SS officer, who was sentenced to death in absentia in France in 1953, reportedly came to Syria in 1954. He is credited with the so-called “German chair” torture, with which they broke the spines of those who refused to talk.
Nazis welcome in Syria
However, he was not the only member of the SS or the Wehrmacht to find refuge in Syria, Noura Chalati from the University of Erfurt, who has researched the relationship between the East German Stasi and the Syrian secret services, tells DW: “The former officials Wehrmacht were more than welcome in the Syrian armed forces because: they had no colonial past in the Middle East, they were experienced in waging wars and participated in the murder of the Jews”.
The then Syrian leadership did not only have Nazis in its service. He also had connections with the Stasi, the secret internal security service of the German Democratic Republic. This contact at the time fit the logic of the Cold War, with the ruling Baath party increasingly approaching the so-called Eastern Bloc of the Soviet Union and its satellite states. Evidence of Assad-Stasi connections is hard to come by, since the East German regime destroyed the relevant files when the secret service was disbanded in 1989: “The Syrian secret service was the Assad regime’s instrument of oppression and torture. The Nazis specialized in torture, while the Stasi specialized in psychological terror. So we are dealing with a regime and an intelligence complex that combined the worst of two worlds.”
Editor: Stefanos Georgakopoulos
Source :Skai
With a wealth of experience honed over 4+ years in journalism, I bring a seasoned voice to the world of news. Currently, I work as a freelance writer and editor, always seeking new opportunities to tell compelling stories in the field of world news.
