War criminal escaped to Egypt, became Muslim

One of the most wanted Nazi war criminals, Aribert Heim, "Dr. Death," who was thought to be in his 90s and in South America, actually died in Cairo in 1992, media reports said yesterday.

Heim was wanted for killing hundreds of concentration camp victims with horrific medical experiments, including performing operations without anesthetics and injecting gasoline directly into their hearts.

German public TV channel ZDF said he died of bowel cancer in 1992 after months of radiotherapy and chemotherapy, citing his son and acquaintances in Cairo, where he was known as Tarek Farid Hussein after converting to Islam.

ZDF and The New York Times claim they have more than 100 documents including his passport, bank statements, personal letters and medical records that prove without a doubt Heim lived in a Cairo hotel until his death.

He had been in hiding since 1962. Last July, Efraim Zuroff, a leading Nazi hunter from the Simon Wiesenthal Centre, said he believed the fugitive was still alive and in Argentina or Chile.

Yesterday, Mr. Zuroff said the German TV report sounded authoritative, but he would be seeking further confirmation.

"The report on the death of the 'Butcher of Mauthausen' is apparently reliable, but wedon't for the moment have either a body or a grave," he said.

Born on June 28, 1914, in Radhersburg, Austria, Heim joined the Nazi party before Germany annexed Austria, when membership was still illegal.

He became a member of Hitler's elite SS guard in 1940 and, after stints at camps in Buchenwald and Sachsenhausen in Germany, was posted to the infamous Mauthausen camp in Austria.

At Mauthausen he became known as "Dr. Death" for his sadistic and grotesque medical experiments. Survivors allege the father of three cut prisoners open, removing their livers, among other things. His cruelty was such he has frequently been compared to Josef Mengele, the "Angel of Death," who was a doctor at Auschwitz.

Heim was No. 2 on the Wiesenthal Centre's most-wanted Nazi list, after Alois Brunner, Adolf Eichmann's main assistant, who is thought to be dead.

Heim was arrested by U. S. troops in 1945, but was released 2½ years later. He then set himself up as a gynecologist in Germany, but fled in 1962 when authorities were about to arrest him.

There had been numerous reported sightings of him as far afield as South America, Egypt and Spain.

In recent years, Nazi hunters thought they were close to pinning him down, once in Spain in 2005 and last year in a small Chilean town 1,000 kilometres south of Santiago.

However, Heim's son, Ruediger, told ZDF his father went into hiding in 1962 and travelled to Cairo via France, Spain and Morocco.

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