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Nazi war criminal spotted
18/07/2008 09:31 - (SA)
Buenos Aires - One of the world's most wanted Nazi war criminals, the former concentration camp doctor Aribert Heim, has been seen in the past weeks in South America, the Simon Wiesenthal Centre said.
"He is very fragile, but he can still walk," Efraim Zuroff, the head of the centre named after the late Nazi hunter Simon Wiesenthal, said on Thursday at a press conference in Buenos Aires.
He did not identify who the witnesses were.
Zuroff did not want to confirm speculation that the reports came from the southern Chilean city of Puerto Montt or the nearby Argentinean city of Bariloche.
"We are more optimistic that we will still find Heim, more so than when we came here," he said.
Together with the head of the Argentinean section of the Wiesenthal Centre, Sergio Widder, Zuroff had travelled to both cities looking for traces of the 94-year-old fugitive.
Zuroff said some of the evidence that Heim was still alive included the fact that his children did not claim his estate valued at two million euros in Germany.
"In addition, Heim's lawyers in Germany have applied for documents that would make no sense if he were dead," Zuroff said.
Suspicion that Heim was somewhere near the two towns came after several years of co-operation with German police.
The Wiesenthal Centre planned to place notices in local newspapers about Heim, offering rewards of €315 000 for information on his whereabouts.
The ads were also intended to erode Heim's confidence.
"People under pressure make mistakes," Zuroff said.
Heim's daughter, Waltraud Diharce, lives in Puerto Montt. In past years, she has also travelled several times to Bariloche. The reasons for her trips were not clear. Zuroff reported that he and Widder had tried to speak to her, but she is currently in Austria for medicinal therapy.
"But honestly, we did not expect that she would help us," Zuroff said.
The Wiesenthal Centre started "Operation: Last Chance" last year, to find the last traces of Nazi criminals in South America.
Heim reportedly was known as "Dr Death" in the Mauthausen concentration camp near Linz, Austria, during World War II, where he reportedly shot hypodermic needles into the hearts of hundreds of inmates or killed people by operating on them without anaesthesia.
Witnesses reported he had made lampshades out of the skin of some of his victims to give to camp commanders.
After the war, he worked as a gynaecologist in Baden Baden, Germany, and has been on the run since 1962 after an international warrant for his arrest was issued. - Sapa-dpa
- SAPA
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