Deutsche Welle said that Sweden is to open a new probe into what happened to World War II hero Raoul Wallenberg after he was captured by the Soviets in 1945.

"We feel that now after a lot of time has passed there may be a possibility to dig up new information," Swedish Foreign Minister Carl Bildt's spokeswoman Anna Charlotte Johansson told AFP.

Raoul Wallenberg, who was working as a diplomat in Nazi-occupied Budapest when he managed to rescue tens of thousands of Jews destined for death camps, went missing after his arrest by Soviet forces in Hungary on January 17, 1945.

The diplomat would have turned 100 this August if he had lived.