The lawyer for Austrian sex offender Josef Fritzl, who kept his own daughter prisoner for 24 years and fathered seven children with her, is applying for his release from prison.
Astrid Wagner told Sky News on Tuesday she hopes to move him to a nursing home.
Fritzl, now 88, was jailed for life in 2009 for killing one of his children through neglect, as well as rape, incest, and enslaving his daughter.
Who is Josef Fritzl?
A new psychiatric report on Fritzl, who has dementia, has said he no longer poses a danger to the public, Austrian public broadcaster ORF said, so a court may now decide whether to move him to a normal prison.
But his lawyer believes he should be out of jail and said she is in the process of applying for his conditional discharge.
In 2008, Fritzl’s daughter, Elisabeth, by that time aged 42, told police she had been held prisoner by her abusive father for years.
He lured Elisabeth into the cellar of the family home in Amstetten in 1984, when she was 18 years old, and told everyone, including his wife, that she had run away and joined a cult.
He had already been sexually abusing her since she was 11.
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The house in Amstetten, Austria – where Fritzl kept his daughter captive for 24 years
His crimes only came to light when one of his children with her became critically ill.
After Fritzl took her to hospital, police issued an appeal for Elisabeth to come forward.
Fritzl released Elisabeth from the cellar and the police were alerted to her reappearance and she told them she had been held captive for more than two decades.
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Fritzl lured Elisabeth into the cellar of the family home. Pic: AP
Speaking to ORF on Monday, Ms Wagner said her client “has a right to be treated with “human dignity”, which, she said, is “only possible in a nursing home and not in a prison”.
Pointing to his physical and cognitive deterioration, she said he had “distortions of reality”, although he was “not severely demented”.
Ms Wagner said she was convinced that Fritzl felt “honest, genuine, deeply felt remorse”, because he “destroyed the beautiful life he had by doing something to his family”.
Fritzl is being held in a high-security unit for mentally disturbed offenders in Stein Prison, in the town of Krems in northeast Austria.
Under Austrian law, anyone sentenced to life is eligible for conditional release after 15 years and Fritzl, who was arrested in 2008, reached that mark in 2023.
In 2023, Fritzl claimed in an interview that he thought his family would “forgive” him for his crimes and he would be “reunited” with them.
He told The Sun he was a fan of King Charles and watched the coronation on TV.
