Nazi war criminal Doctor Death ‘could be in Spain’

A NAZI war criminal known as Doctor Death for his experiments that killed hundreds of prisoners during WWII is reported to have been found in Spain.

The German weekly Der Spiegel and Israeli website Haaretz reported that Spanish investigators believe the fugitive, Aribert Heim, could be located in Spain.

However, police in Spain said they had not found Heim during searches after receiving indications he was located in the north-eastern province of Girona.

A police spokesman in Girona, Joan Lopez, said: “We haven’t detained anyone with that name. All we know is that he may have been in the area of Palafrugell recently.”

Haaretz, said Heim, 91, will soon be arrested by Spanish police. He was charged by German authorities in 1962 with killing hundreds of concentration camp inmates in Germany and Austria with lethal injections.

A spokesman for the Nazi-hunting Simon Wiesenthal Centre, Stephen Clem, told Haaretz the centre has evidence that Heim is still alive.

Since the end of the war he has evaded capture in Germany, Argentina, Denmark, Brazil and Spain.

Heim has amassed a fortune of more than €1.6 million in a Berlin bank, Mr Clem added.

During the war, Heim earned the nickname “doctor death” for performing especially sadistic experiments on inmates at the Buchenwald and Mauthausen camps.

The research included surgery without anaesthesia and injecting prisoners with gasoline, poison and lethal drugs to see how much their bodies could take before dying.

Spanish investigators believe a relative of Heim has transferred about €300,000 to an acquaintance in Spain over the past five years and are looking into the possibility that at least some of it may have been used to support Heim.

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 Germany until he was indicted. German authorities have offered a €132,000 reward for his arrest, and the Simon Wiesenthal Centre €10,100.

The Centre earlier this year asked Austria to find a way to strip Heim of his academic title of doctor, which 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 there.