Germany defends hunt for most-wanted Nazi

German officials insisted yesterday they were doing their utmost to catch Aribert Heim, a 94-year-old doctor considered the world's most-wanted Nazi war-crimes suspect.

Heim, who performed gruesome, fatal experiments on concentration-camp inmates, vanished in 1962 as arrest loomed, and is thought to be still alive with an assumed name in Spain or Latin America.

The Simon Wiesenthal Center in Jerusalem rates him first on its list of the 10 most-wanted Nazi suspects.

In Baden-Baden, court spokesman Heinz Heister rejected claims last week by the Wiesenthal chief Efraim Zuroff that a German judge had obstructed the hunt for Heim, and called the Zuroff allegation "defamatory."

Heister told DPA that a German judge denied permission to tap the phones of Heim relatives because it had not satisfied criteria under German criminal-investigation laws, and this had been confirmed on appeal.

This setback was being taken out of context, he said.

"We are very committed to this investigation and are working intensively on it," said the spokesman, adding that the German judges had mounted 11 requests since 2005 for foreign legal assistance as they try to track Heim down.