The Simon Wiesenthal Center is extending a campaign to search for aging Nazis
to South America, where investigators said they believe
Aribert Heim, one of the most sought-after suspected war
criminals, is hiding.
The Simon Wiesenthal Center will launch what may be the final phase of its "Operation: Last Chance" to nab wanted Nazi war criminals in four South American countries this week,
a spokeswoman for the center's Jerusalem office said
on Monday, Nov. 26.
The project, which began in
Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia in July 2002, offers financial
rewards for information which leads to the prosecution
and punishment of Nazi war criminals still at large.
More than 60 years after the
fall of the Third Reich, the Jewish rights group said
it had found new leads that Heim, known as "Dr. Death" for performing gruesome medical experiments on concentration camp victims, is
hiding in South America.
Tangle of clues
"We could be closer to him than we have been for a long time," Efraim Zuroff, head of the Wiesenthal Center's Jerusalem office and chief Nazi
hunter, told the DPA news agency on Monday.
While Heim's family has said
he died in 1993 in Argentina, investigators continue
to search for the man, who has been unseen since he left
a gynecological practice in the German city of Baden-Baden
in 1962, with leads pointing to Germany, Austria, Denmark,
Spain, Venezuela, Chile and Uruguay. Some believe Heim
was executed by Israeli intelligence agents in 1982.
If alive, Heim would be 93 years old.
Zuroff said the center estimates
that "dozens, if not hundreds" of suspected Nazi war criminals are currently hiding in South America.
Expanded operation
Zuroff was in Buenos Aires
to extend the center's search for Nazis wanted for war
crimes to Argentina, Brazil, Chile and Uruguay. The center
estimates that between 150 and 300 suspected war criminals
entered Argentina after Germany's defeat in World War
II.
"Given the large number of Nazi war criminals and collaborators who escaped to
South America, the launching of 'Operation: Last Chance'
in these counties has the potential to yield important
results," Zuroff said in a statement.
According to the center, the
program has yielded the names of 488 suspects in 20 countries
and referred 99 of the cases to local prosecutors. In
addition to dozens of ongoing investigations, there have
been three arrest warrants and two extradition requests.
"The problem is
not finding these people, but getting them into a courtroom," Zuroff told Israel's Jerusalem Post. "Political will is turning out to be more difficult than finding information and
catching the suspects."
dw-world.de
|