Most-Wanted Ex-Nazi May Be in Egypt

VIENNA —  The aged Alois Brunner, No. 1 on the most-wanted list of ex-Nazis, is reported to have left his longtime haven in Syria and slipped into Egypt with a new look and identity, European police sources said.

Brunner, according to the report from police sources Monday, left Damascus in 1991, traveled to Cairo and obtained a passport from the Austrian Embassy, using false identity papers.

Officials at Egypt’s Interior Ministry and Austria’s Foreign Ministry said they have no information on the report.

Nazi-hunter Serge Klarsfeld of Paris, who has long pursued Brunner, said the latest report came from Israel.

A report last December in a Paris newsletter said the Austrian-born Brunner, who allegedly oversaw the deportation of more than 100,000 European Jews to Nazi death camps in World War II, died last year in Syria at age 79 or 80.

But Klarsfeld said he does not believe that Brunner is dead. “If he died, the Syrians would leave his body in Beirut and then announce to the world that ‘You see, he was in Lebanon all the time,’ ” he said.