The Simon Wiesenthal Centre has expressed doubts about a report that Aribert
Heim, one of the most-wanted Nazi criminals, died in Egypt
in 1992.
"There's no body, no corpse, no DNA, no grave," Efraim Zuroff, the centre's leading Nazi hunter, told AP agency.
On Wednesday, Germany's ZDF
TV reported that Heim died in Cairo, saying it had found
his passport and other documents.
Heim is accused of killing
hundreds of inmates at a concentration camp where he
was a doctor during World War II.
'Too perfect'
On Thursday, Mr Zuroff said
the report about Heim's death raised "more questions than it answers".
"
We can't sign off on a story like this because of some
semi-plausible explanation," he
said.
"Keep in mind these
people have a vested interest in being declared dead
- it's a perfectly crafted story; that's the problem,
it's too perfect," Mr Zuroff told the AP.
In its report, ZDF quoted
witnesses, including Heim's son, as confirming that Aribert
Heim, who was also known as Doctor Death, died in 1992.
It said it had found a number
of Heim's personal documents, including his passport
and personal letters, in a hotel room in Cairo where
he lived under a pseudonym.
The TV channel, working with
the New York Times newspaper, also said Heim had converted
to Islam.
Experiments
Heim was one of the last major
Nazi fugitives believed to be still at large.
He is accused of carrying
out medical experiments on prisoners of the Mauthausen
concentration camp in Austria during World War II.
After the war he lived in
West Germany, working as a doctor.
He disappeared in 1962 when
police opened an investigation into his past.
bbc.co.uk
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