There are no known Nazi war criminals hiding in South Africa, but rewards of $10 000 are the carrot for information leading to their arrest and prosecution worldwide.

This was the word yesterday from Efraim Zuroff, director of the Simon Wiesenthal Centre in Israel which concerns itself with issues relating to the wellbeing and security of Jewish people worldwide, including bringing Nazi war criminals to justice.

Zuroff, who is in South Africa for a week-long visit, said: "We were instrumental in bringing to justice Dinko Sakic, the last commander of the Jasenovac concentration camp in Croatia.

He received the maximum sentence and is now in prison."

Zuroff said they had not been able to identify any perpetrators in South Africa but that it did not mean there were none.

"Countries like Canada and Australia have a large number of Nazi criminals.

"After World War 2 these countries were open to immigration and allowed many East Europeans, many of whom were Nazis, to immigrate.

"But South Africa was closed to immigration after the war, so we have not found them here like we found them in other countries," he said.

Zuroff said they had suspicions about Nazi fugitives in Namibia but have had many difficulties there in terms of infrastructure for investigations.

He said the issues relating to extraditing holocaust perpetrators were also very complex.

"Germany does not extradite any of its citizens (to other countries). Some countries prefer to put perpetrators on trial where they live and not where the crime took place. This is complicated as witnesses need to be found and moved.

"There is no world court for this. The international Criminal Court was only established last summer and only deals with crimes committed now," Zuroff said.

l Reuters reported from Munich yesterday that an 86-year-old man accused of leading a Slovak Nazi division involved in massacres near the end of World War 2, has been charged with murder.

Ladislav Niznansky was accused of commanding a Slovak division of Nazi special forces code-named Edelweiss, which suppressed anti-Nazi resistance in the occupied country.

Niznansky, who became a German citizen in 1996, was arrested in January in Munich. He is suspected of being involved in a massacre of 146 people in January 1945, state prosecutors said in a statement.

The victims in the central Slovak villages of Ostry Grun and Klak included 70 women and 51 children.

He is also accused of ordering a firing squad to execute 18 Jews in Slovakia near the village of Ksina in February 1945.

Niznansky was already tried in absentia and sentenced to death by a court in former Czechoslovakia in 1962.

No date for a trial in Germany has been set yet. If convicted he faces life imprisonment.