Horrific images are circulating on the internet after the release of the capital's Saydnaya prison Syria Damascus, built five stories deep underground. Starving people can be seen on them. Still others stand in completely overcrowded cells. Many prisoners cannot move and have to be carried out of the prison. The liberators also filmed the room where people are crouching and wailing in the semi-darkness, apparently with severe psychological consequences after the torture. The bodies of numerous persons killed during torture were also found. In another room are piles of shoes. According to media reports, there were thousands of people in that prison alone on the day of liberation.
According to a report by the human rights organization Amnesty International, up to 2011 people were executed in that prison between September 2015 and December 15.000 without trial. writes DW.
On social networks, some users draw direct parallels with the Nazis, especially with SS officer Alois Brunner, who fled to Syria in 1945. Brunner was one of Adolf Eichmann's most important collaborators, responsible for the persecution, expulsion and deportation of six million Jews.
Training in Damascus
Brunner, however, was not the only member of the SS or Wehrmacht to find refuge in Syria, says Noura Chalati of Berlin's Leibniz Center for the Modern East. "Many of them were directly employed by the Syrian Army General Staff on one-year contracts, where they worked as advisers to the army and military intelligence." The documents show that the General Staff was particularly interested in them because they were stateless, coming from a country without colonial rule. history, and in addition they had active war experience and participated in the persecution of Jews. "They were valued for their practical experience," says Chalati, who investigates the relationship between the former East German (GDR) Stasi secret service and Syrian intelligence.
Alois Bruner, who was sentenced to death in absentia in France in 1953, came to Syria in 1954 under a false identity. Soon - as stated in the book "The Fugitives" by the Israeli historian Danny Orbach - Brunner became involved in the smuggling of weapons from the West to Arab countries. In 1959, the then head of one of the Syrian secret services arrested Bruner on charges of espionage and threatened him with life imprisonment. Then Bruner revealed his true identity and placed himself in the service of the Syrian intelligence services. In the following years, he trained their officers in counterintelligence and interrogation techniques. His courses included well-known heads of the Syrian secret services, such as General Ali Haidar, who was the commander of special forces for 26 years, Ali Dubsa, the head of counterintelligence, and Mustafa Tlas, the defense minister of the later Assad regime, responsible for suppressing the Muslim Brotherhood rebellion in Hama in 1982. year with 30.000 victims.
"German Chair"
One of the elements of torture used by the Assad regime until recently was the so-called The "German chair", on which the victims' spines were broken by overexertion. It has occasionally been suggested that Brunner was its inventor. It is possible, Orbach writes, but it has not been proven. However, he "helped create sophisticated instruments of torture." That is why it is possible, concludes Orbach, that he was also involved in the development of the "German chair".
Dictator Hafez al-Assad, in power since 1970, benefited greatly from Brunner's knowledge and wealth of experience. "He knew how to collect and use information, how to manipulate people, and he understood what was crucial in the activities of the secret services," writes Brunner's biographer Didier Eppelbaum ("Alois Brunner: Undisputed Hatred"). "He knew more than any Syrian officer." That's why he was instrumental in the restructuring of the intelligence service."
Thanks to his "knowledge", Brunner maintained himself in the highest circles of the political establishment, investigative journalist Hedi Ouige told the France Inter radio station in 2017. "The deal was: protection in exchange for Nazi know-how." Brunner trained the 'Nazi' secret service and that was the first round around Hafez al-Assad," said Ouij, who as a prisoner of the Assad regime in 2017 investigated Brunner's last years of life, until his death in 2002.
Stasi help
However, the Syrian leadership did not rely only on the help of Nazi fugitives. They also used the state security services of the then German Democratic Republic (Stasi). Politically, it fit the logic of the Cold War, as Syria in the 1960s was non-aligned but increasingly aligned with the Eastern Bloc under a regime led by the Baath Party. The first contacts in that field date back to 1966, which can be seen from a Syrian request, says Nura Chalati. In Damascus, they were interested in everything, from weapons to the organization of secret services and political institutions. "However, the GDR Ministry of State Security showed restraint," says Chalati. Evidence is scarce, as the GDR destroyed all relevant documents during the country's collapse in 1989.
"The worst of both worlds"
In general, it is difficult to prove the direct influence of the Nazis or the secret police of the GDR, ie the Stasi, summarizes Nura Chalati. “But when you add it all up, you get a picture that is very much in line with what we see in Syria today.” For example, the now-declassified documents show how bureaucratic the Syrian secret service was. "We know this phenomenon from GDR and Stasi. I cannot claim that there is a direct connection, but this phenomenon catches the eye," says Chalati.
At the same time, the Syrian secret service was an instrument of repression and torture of the regime in Damascus, responsible for the worst human rights violations. Such an approach is more like the methods of the Nazis and the Gestapo than the Stasi. "Essentially, what we have here is a regime and a secret service complex that combines the worst of both worlds."
