September 19, 2005
Spanish police are searching for Nazi war criminal Aribert Heim, who is believed to be still alive. A police spokesman told JTA that new evidence pointed to the possibility that Heim, 91, may be living undercover somewhere near the Mediterranean coastal city of Alicante. During World War II, Heim murdered hundreds of people, largely via lethal injection, at the Mauthausen concentration camp in Austria. Known as the “Butcher of Mauthausen,” Heim also performed “medical experiments” in which he amputated body parts without painkillers to see how long prisoners would live. A US$ 170,000 reward has been offered for the man's arrest. Heim's family claimed that he had died years ago in Argentina, but the German weekly magazine "Der Spiegel" reported that German police had discovered money transfers starting several years ago to a bank on Spain’s coast that were picked up by a contact.
