Hitler's deputy, Rudolf Hess, was murdered by the crack British assault arm - the SAS. That is the claim by his son, Wolf-Rudiger Hess, on the sixth anniversary of the 93-year-old former Nazi's death at Spandau prison in Berlin.
His conclusion, after years of investigation in Germany and the United Kingdom, is backed by the prison's former US commandant, Col.Eugene K.Bird, and the male nurse who cared for Hess in his last days.
Hess Jnr., a 56-year-old planning engineer, living in Munich, told me that he would mark August 17 by working even more intensely on the crusade he took up on that date in 1987: to prove that his father was strangled in a small garden hut. And to prove that the British were behind it.
He said: 'I am absolutely convinced my father did not commit suicide by tying a lamp cord around his neck. There was a murder.'
Who could have murdered the frail old man in a huge red-brick fortress that was devoted to keeping a single prisoner behind bars?
'The SAS from Britain,' Hess answered.
The Russians, said Mr. Hess, were about to finally abandon their veto on Hess's release after 46 years of stubbornly rejecting pleas by the other three Powers - France, the US and Britain - to allow him to go home to his wife. Hess Jnr. had been called to the Soviet Embassy and informed of this.
'That meant that the Western powers could no longer hide behind the Russian veto. They never really wanted him released. So it was better to blame the Russians. They were quite sure the Russians would always say 'no'. In fact they would not have been very happy if he was released.'
What was the reason for British reluctance to have the old relic of Nazism freed? I asked him.
'Obviously he knew things they did not want to come out. You must not forget that the British government is keeping classified documents about my father secret until 2017. So it didn't make sense to have these documents kept secret and then release the crown witness.
'I have spent years investigating what was in those documents, who they were embarrassing to and why. And it has been very difficult because the Allies try and block everything.
'They have destroyed the so-called suicide electric cable; they have destroyed the garden hut and the prison itself; all the details and the circumstances which could have led to finding out what really happened.
'The Allies have their reasons not to continue investigations. Scotland Yard started an investigation and gave a recommendation soon afterwards for a full-scale murder investigation. Then the Director of Public Prosecutions, Mr. Green, said it was not necessary to continue.
'Obviously that decision was made by the Government, Mrs. Margaret Thatcher.'
In Berlin, Col. Eugene Bird, [who was sacked as US commandant of Spandau for collaborating with me and Rudolf Hess on a book 'The Loneliest Man in the World'], says he, too, has been investigating Hess's death - by talking to warders and officers then working in the prison and specifically to Hess's male nurse, Mr. Abdallah Melaouhi, who pushed his way on to the death scene despite strenuous efforts to keep him away.
'Hess was murdered,' said Gene Bird, 'I am convinced of it. The man was 93 years old. He could not even rise from a bench alone, he had to be helped up. He could not walk down the spiral staircase from his cell to the garden, they had to put in a lift in 1981, when he was in his late 80s.
'He walked with a cane, dragging his right foot behind him, because he had suffered a slight stroke. He was blind in the right eye and could see very little out of the left eye. Whenever he walked in the garden, he had to have a man on each side in case he stumbled and fell.
'Hess could not tie his own shoes, his hands suffered so badly from arthritis. He could not get his fingers and thumbs apart, they had to literally insert a spoon into his hand so he could eat.
'Most significant about whether he suicided or not is the fact that he could not raise his arms above shoulder level. To hang yourself, you have got to be able to do that.
'Yet with all these disabilities, a 93-year-old man, a prisoner watched more closely than any other in history, at a massive cost each year, was said to have entered the garden hut alone, tied an electric flex around his neck, looped it over a latch just 1m 30cms from the floor - not high enough to hang a cat - and strangled himself.
'And the flex of the standard lamp still remained in the wall socket! Mr. Melaouhi, who got to the scene within minutes, says he saw an American guard, excited, sweating, and with his tie awry, shouting: 'The pig is finished!' That black American guard still lives in Berlin, but he avoids all attempts to interview him. When a television crew came recently to talk to me he ran away.
'There were two other people there in American uniforms. Abdallah had never seen them before. He gave Hess mouth-to-mouth resuscitation, and when that failed he went to the resuscitation equipment which he had checked and signed as in good order just hours before - and found the oxygen tank empty and the tubes for breathing full of holes.
'Abdallah made a report and sent it to Scotland Yard. He has since had threats of death and is a scared man.'
Col.Bird concluded: 'If that man was murdered it had to be a decision taken at the highest level. I will say no more than that.'
A few minutes later I called Abdallah Melaouhi at his home in Berlin, where he had just returned after hospital duty. He said to me: 'Yes. I believe Mr.Hess was murdered. But please...not on the telephone. You come to Berlin and see me. But not the telephone.'
