Hans Feddersen of the Plus weekly admitted that it was "not a good idea" to publish the advertisement that drew strong reactions from readers and criticism from the German ambassador in Windhoek.

"I am busy formulating an apology to appear this coming Friday in the next edition," said Feddersen.

"With joy and satisfaction, we take notice of the death of the big monster.

On September 20th, the earth and its inhabitants were delivered from Simon," said the quarter-page advertisement in the weekly.

"His biggest crime was to live 96 years," said the advert signed by a group called International Action Against Forgetting.

Wiesenthal, who survived Nazi concentration camps to become a lifelong hunter of Nazi war criminals, died at age 96 at his home in Vienna on September 20.

He was buried in Israel.

His targets included Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann, one of the foremost planners of Jewish extermination.

The advertisement said "Simon" had committed "all sorts of crimes" such as "libel, kidnapping, defamation, betrayal, attempted murder and murder".

German ambassador Wolfgang Massing sent an open letter to Feddersen demanding an apology.

"Please distance yourself from this shameful advertisement", Massing wrote in the letter published in the daily newspaper Allgemeine Zeitung.

"It would be appropriate for you to apologise to Jewish citizens (in Namibia)", Massing noted.

Feddersen said he had been offered more than the usual rate to publish the advertisement and that he "assumed that the source of the money" was from Germany.

He said that since German hate laws prevent the publication of such advertisements in Germany, pro-Nazi groups often sought outlets elsewhere for their message.

A similar controversy occurred in 1994 when an English daily in Namibia, a former imperial German colony, published an advertisement that fondly remembered prominent Nazi Rudolf Hess.

The Namibian National Society for Human Rights (NSHR) said it was outraged by this "reckless publication of Nazi hate propaganda".

"While international leaders are eulogising Wiesenthal, here in Namibia we are publishing ads discrediting this very same indefatigable fighter for justice", said Phil ya Nangoloh, executive director of the NSHR.

The group called for the prosecution of those responsible for the publication of the advertisement under Namibia's anti-discrimination laws.

- Nampa-AFP

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