Kampusch probe re-opened

2008-10-24 08:10

Vienna - Austrian police have re-opened their investigation into the 12-year kidnapping of Natascha Kampusch - seeking a second abductor, the country's justice ministry told a news agency on Thursday.

Die Presse daily reports the development in its Friday edition, with APA news agency reporting confirmation through justice ministry spokesperson Maria Berger.

The probe is based on testimony given recently to an interior ministry oversight commission - one of a series of checks ordered following the avalanche of negative global publicity since the emergence of the Josef Fritzl case.

A 12-year-old girl said to have witnessed Kampusch's kidnapping claimed that there were two perpetrators - information the authorities are treating seriously.

Kampusch was kidnapped on her way to school in 1998, aged 10, and was held captive in a house outside Vienna until she escaped in August 2006.

Her captor, Wolfgang Priklopil, committed suicide by throwing himself under a train on the night of her escape.

Kampusch recently began hosting a talk show on Austrian television, having developed an interest in the media the moment she was thrust into the spotlight upon escaping her ordeal.

The case of Fritzl, Austria's most shocking incest episode, came to light in April this year, after a child of one of Josef's daughters, Elisabeth, had to be hospitalised.

Elisabeth, it transpired, had spent 24 years locked up in a cellar, sexually abused by her father.

Three of their seven children were brought to live with "grandparents" Josef and his wife Rosemarie, while the other three spent their entire lives in the underground dungeon with their mother, never seeing daylight.

All are learning with psychiatrists how to live in wider society at an undisclosed location, it has since been reported.

- AFP