Man who raped and imprisoned daughter for 24 years could go to regular prison, court rules

An Austrian court said on Tuesday it had ruled that the country's most infamous criminal, incestuous rapist Josef Fritzl, could be transferred from a prison psychiatric unit to a regular prison. Despite the change, his release is unlikely.

Fritzl, who has now changed his name, raped his daughter, who he held captive for 24 years in a dungeon he built beneath his house, fathering seven children with her during the period.

The 89-year-old has been serving a life sentence in a prison unit for “mentally abnormal” inmates since his 2009 conviction for incest, rape, enslavement, coercion and neglectful murder of one of the children, a newborn boy.

While a transfer could, in principle, pave the way for Fritzl's conditional release from prison, the court said such a request was unlikely to be approved due to “special preventive reasons”.

Fritzl's lawyer, Astrid Wagner, said she would request such a release within a year of her transfer.

“He no longer poses a threat that requires being held in a forensic-therapeutic center,” the court said, using a more recent term for where he is being held. The court cited his advancing dementia and frailty as factors.

“In the same decision, the three-judge panel also ruled that a conditional release from regular custody, i.e. a release, is not possible for special preventive reasons,” the statement said, referring to the “unprecedented criminal energy” that he used.

Therefore, it was not expected that he would be released completely, the statement said.

At a hearing in a court in the town of Krems an der Donau, near Vienna, in January, the court allowed Fritzl's transfer, only for a higher court to overturn that decision in March, ruling that “the facts necessary for such conditional release had not yet been fully established.”

He sent the case back to the first court, ordering it to obtain a fuller picture of Fritzl's suitability for a transfer.

The first court held a hearing last month inside the prison where Fritzl is being held. Prosecutors could still file a complaint against the decision to move him to a regular prison in an attempt to overturn it, as they did after the first decision.