German court confirms Nazi 'Doctor Death' died in 1992
A court in south-west Germany has confirmed that Aribert Heim, the fugitive Nazi war crimes suspect dubbed "Doctor Death", did die in 1992.
The regional court in Baden-Baden said it was giving up its inquiry into the suspect after concluding he had died in Egypt under an assumed identity.
Heim's body was never found but evidence of his death was supplied by his lawyer and his son.
He is said to have experimented on Jewish prisoners during the Holocaust.
The Austrian-born physician was indicted by Germany on charges that he had murdered hundreds of inmates while serving as a doctor at Mauthausen concentration camp in Austria.
Holocaust survivors say he performed operations and amputations without anaesthetic to see how much pain his victims could endure.
Injecting victims' hearts with petrol, water or poison was said to have been his favoured method at Mauthausen, and when he was "bored", he apparently timed patients' deaths with a stopwatch.
After World War II, Heim practised medicine in Baden-Baden until 1962, when he was indicted as a war criminal and fled the country.
Baden-Baden prosecutors said on Friday that papers provided by Heim's lawyer and testimony from his son had helped convince them that Heim was the same person as Tarek Hussein Farid, who died of bowel cancer in Cairo in 1992.
Had he lived, the war crimes suspect would now be 98.
Media reports of his death - which were aired three years ago - were dismissed by some who still believed he was in hiding.