Nazi doctor who killed hundreds found in Spain
(AP)
Updated: 2005-10-15 20:46

A Nazi war criminal known as "doctor death" for his experiments that killed hundreds of prisoners during World War II has been found in Spain, an Israeli newspaper's Web site reported Saturday.

The German weekly Der Spiegel also reported Saturday that the fugitive, Aribert Heim, is located in Spain.

Heim, 91, will soon be arrested by Spanish police, the Haaretz newspaper reported. Heim had been at large since he was charged by German authorities in 1962 with killing hundreds of concentration inmates in Germany and Austria with lethal injections.

A spokesman with the Nazi watchdog Simon Wiesenthal Center,Stephen Clem, told Haaretz that the center has evidence that Heim is still alive. Heim has since the end of the war evaded capture in Germany, Argentina, Denmark, Brazil and Spain.

Heim has amassed a fortune of more than US$2 million (euro1,655,000) in a Berlin bank, Clem told Haaretz.

A call to the center's Israeli branch requesting comment was not immediately returned Saturday.

During the war, Heim earned his nickname of "doctor death" for performing especially sadistic experiments on inmates at the Buchanwald and Mauthausen camps. The research included surgery without anesthesia and injecting prisoners with gasoline, poison and lethal drugs to see how much their bodies could take before dying, Haaretz said.

Spanish investigators believe a relative of Heim has transferred about US$363,000 (euro300,000) to an acquaintance in Spain over the past five years and are looking into the possibility that at least some of it it may have been used to support Heim, Der Spiegel reported.

The magazine said Spain was suspected as his possible hiding place as long ago as the mid-1980s, and there have been increasing indications over recent weeks that he may have until recently lived somewhere near Denia on the Mediterranean coast.

After the war, Heim worked as a doctor in southern Germany until he was indicted. German authorities have offered a US$159,000 (euro132,000) reward for his arrest, and the Simon Wiesenthal Center US$12,200 (euro10,000).

The Simon Wiesenthal earlier this year asked Austria to find a way to strip Heim of his academic title of doctor that he received in 1940 from the University of Vienna. Heim was never allowed to practice medicine in Austria because he did not finish his medical training in the country.