By Alain Navarro

CAIRO, Feb 05, 2009 (AFP) - Wanted German war criminal Aribert Heim, also known as Doctor Death, was not the only Nazi to have found refuge in Egypt after the Second World War.

Heim, reported on Wednesday to have died peacefully in Cairo in 1992 after 30 years on the run, was one of many Nazis to have converted to Islam and settled in Egypt, where alliances were initially forged during the 1939-45 war.

Arab nationalists trying to break free from the yoke of British colonialism found a natural backer in Nazi Germany, which invested in such men as future Egyptian president Anwar Sadat to fight the British occupiers during the war.

And in the turbulent post-war atmosphere, many Nazis came to Egypt where they benefited from "high ranking" friendships within the entourage of British-backed King Farouk, historians say.

Future Egyptian president Gamal Abdel Nasser -- Sadat's predecessor -- deposed Farouk in 1956 and employed several Nazis to generate propaganda against Israel, established in 1948 following a war with several Arab armies.

The ODESSA network, which was reportedly set up after WWII to get wanted Nazis out of Germany and Austria, extended to that most familiar of Nazi destinations Argentina, as well as Syria and Egypt.

Johann Von Leers, close to Nazi propagandist Joseph Goebbels, came to Egypt in the 1950s, converted to Islam and became head of the "anti-Zionist propaganda service" at the foreign ministry.

According to historian of the Nazi era Kurt Tauber, Egypt's post-war ministries of information and defence employed former SS and SA officers, such as Louis Heiden, Walter Bollmann and Wilhelm Bocker.

A former Nazi's son who worked in Egypt as a financial manager told AFP on condition of anonymity how his family travelled to Egypt having first sought refuge in Switzerland.

"My father was a Nazi spy in the Balkans, a liaison agent with Serb nationalists. We came thanks to relations with Farouk's court. Then he worked in the armaments industry under Nasser," he said.

With the arrival of Russian engineers to construct the Aswan High Dam in 1960, Moscow insisted that Nazis be purged from Egypt's military apparatus, but tolerated their continued presence in ideological jobs, a Western journalist who has lived in Egypt for more than 50 years told AFP.

It is unknown exactly how many Nazis came to Egypt, and Egyptian authorities would rather not discuss the matter.

Germany's ambassador to Cairo, Bernd Erbel, said that Heim "was unknown to us, it would have been too dangerous. I don't think he was a German citizen any more but became an Egyptian.

"They certainly weren't going to tell us they were here, and I have no details on them. To know more, I sometimes go to the Google search engine," Erbel said.

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Copyright AFP 2009.