Trial of Austrian incest suspect Fritzl to start on March 16

Jan 22, 2009, 11:39 GMT

Vienna - An Austrian court is set to try Josef Fritzl from March 16 on charges that he imprisoned his daughter for 24 years and murdered one of the seven children she bore him, the prosecution office at the court in Sankt Poelten confirmed Thursday.

One of the children Fritzl's daughter Elisabeth bore in captivity died soon after birth in 1996. Josef Fritzl, 73, who burned the infant's body in an oven, is accused of murder as he failed to provide medical care for the newborn.

Besides the murder charge, which carries a possible life sentence, Fritzl is accused of enslavement, rape, imprisonment, aggravated coercion and incest.

Most of the trial proceedings are to take place in camera. Elisabeth Fritzl, 42, and her children would not testify in court, according to a spokesperson.

Josef Fritzl has admitted most of the charges. A court-appointed psychiatrist determined that he was of sound mind when he committed the alleged crimes.

But the prosecutor is requesting that he be imprisoned in a psychiatric facility as 'he has a severe psychological disorder,' according to prosecution spokesman Gerhard Sedlacek.

In April 2008, the case came to light when Elisabeth Fritzl managed to bring one of her daughters to a hospital.

The suspect had kept his daughter and her children locked up in a dungeon built beneath his house in Amstetten in the province of Lower Austria. The windowless prison measured only 19 square metres.

Elisabeth spent the first nine months of captivity tied with an iron chain. She had to give birth to all her children without medical assistance.

Fritzl deceived authorities by claiming that his daughter was a runaway. When he took three of the six surviving children upstairs to live with him and his wife, he pretended that Elisabeth had left the children at his doorstep.

Fritzl's wife Rosemarie claims she did not know of the crimes that went on below her home, according to Austrian police.