Aug. 14



Police Confirm Cairo Link to Fugitive Nazi


The German police confirmed Thursday that a briefcase filled with
documents discovered in Cairo belonged to the Nazi fugitive and
concentration camp doctor Aribert Ferdinand Heim. The police
could not confirm that he had died in Egypt in 1992 as witnesses there and
in Germany said.

Uncovering Lost Path of the Most Wanted Nazi (February 5, 2009) Experts
working for the police in the German state of Baden-Wrttemberg found
evidence showing that the bag and the papers inside it, including personal
letters, financial documents and medical records, must have been in a
North African country for many years.

Analysis of dust in the old leather briefcase, handed over to The New York
Times and the German television station ZDF by the Egyptian family Dr.
Heim lived with at the time of his death, included a particular form of
lime that is found in Egypt, as well as the presence of certain
micro-organisms supporting its authenticity. Handwriting experts also
compared documents from the briefcase with other samples of Dr. Heims
handwriting.

"The extensive criminal technical analyses of the documents from the
briefcase lead us to the conclusion that it actually came from Aribert
Heim," said the police in a statement.

German investigators traveled to Cairo in July to meet with their Egyptian
counterparts, who confirmed the veracity of documents showing that Dr.
Heim entered Egypt in 1963, months after he fled Germany as the police
there prepared to arrest him.

Dr. Heim was accused of killing inmates at the concentration camp of
Mauthausen in grisly fashion by performing unnecessary fatal operations on
prisoners without anesthesia and injecting poison, including gasoline,
into the hearts of others.

He took the name Tarek Hussein Farid after converting to Islam, according
to witnesses and documents found in the briefcase. Officials in Cairo
issued a certified copy of a death certificate under that name, but
according to the statement, the police have been unable to confirm that it
is one and the same person. German investigators have not had the
opportunity to question witnesses in Egypt.

"At what point concrete results can be expected is not yet clear," the
police statement said. Unresolved remains the question of where Dr. Heim's
body was buried. Witnesses said that he was interred in a mass grave after
a failed attempt to donate his body for use in scientific research.

"I'm glad that it has been confirmed that my father lived in Egypt and I'm
very optimistic that there will be an official confirmation of his death
in the near future," said his son, Rdiger Heim, in an interview on
Thursday. "Aribert Heim will never come back because he is dead," said Mr.
Heim, who has said he was with his father at the time of his death.

In February the police in Baden-Wrttemberg said they had information "from
the personal circle" of Dr. Heim, who would now be 95, indicating that he
died of rectal cancer in Cairo in 1992. Dr. Mohsen Barsoum, one of the
doctors whose names appeared on the medical files found in the briefcase,
recalled that he had treated the man he knew as Tarek Hussein Farid and
that he suffered from an advanced form of the disease.

Efraim Zuroff, the chief Nazi hunter for the Simon Wiesenthal Center, said
that he had no doubt that Dr. Heim had lived in Egypt, but continued to
question whether he had died there as well. "What's missing for me is
really the forensics on the body, this is the problem," said Mr. Zuroff
in a telephone interview from Jerusalem, where he is based.

(source: New York Times)