As of: January 25, 2024, 11:01 a.m
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88-year-old Josef Fritzl on the way to the hearing at the Krems regional court.
© Helmut Fohringer/APA/dpa
The Austrian, who held his daughter prisoner for 24 years and fathered seven children with her, is not allowed to leave prison early.
However, Fritzl is moved within the prison.
Krems - Josef Fritzl, who became known as the “Monster of Amstetten”, remains in custody.
A panel of three judges at the Krems Regional Court in Austria decided that the now 88-year-old would not be released early for preventive reasons, as a spokesman for the regional court said.
However, the prisoner should be transferred from the prison system to the normal prison system under certain conditions.
According to the court spokesman, this decision is not yet legally binding.
Fritzl was sentenced to life imprisonment in March 2009.
The charges in the trial were murder by omission, rape, deprivation of liberty, severe coercion, slavery and incest.
Since then, the trained electrical engineer has been in prison at the Stein prison near Krems and had to undergo therapy there.
In 1984, in the small Austrian town of Amstetten, Fritzl locked his then 18-year-old daughter in the soundproof cellar of his house.
Over the next 24 years he raped her thousands of times and fathered seven children with her.
One of them soon died.
According to authorities, the wife, who lived on the first floor of the house with the rest of the family, was unaware of any of this.
The case broke in 2008 and made headlines around the world.
Fritzl took on a new last name in prison.
dpa