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Friend of Austrian girl's abductor to go on trial
Source: Agencies |
July 15, 2010, Thursday
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A MAN accused of helping to cover up the kidnapping of Austrian schoolgirl Natascha Kampusch will go on trial in Vienna on Aug. 30, a court spokesman said yesterday.
Kampusch was abducted as she walked to school in 1998, when she was aged 10, and was held in a windowless cell under the garage of a private house until she escaped in Aug. 2006. Her captor Wolfgang Priklopil committed suicide hours later.
Prosecutors have accused his friend Ernst Holzapfel of being an accessory to the cover up of the kidnap. Priklopil telephoned Holzapfel after Kampusch's escape to ask for help a few hours before he committed suicide.
Holzapfel, who will be tried by the Vienna regional court, has denied the charges but said publicly shortly after Kampusch escaped that he had met her unwittingly once when Priklopil visited him.
"(He) is a pawn that they are now trying to use -- with all force and in retrospect -- to justify reopening the investigation," his lawyer was quoted as saying by the Austria Press Agency.
The case was reopened after an internal investigation concluded that several possible leads had been ignored by Austrian authorities.
Kampusch has said Priklopil acted alone but welcomed the reopening of the search for possible accomplices.
She has kept up a prominent media profile since her escape. She has hosted a talk show, her memoirs will be published in September and a film about her will be released in 2012.
Kampusch was abducted as she walked to school in 1998, when she was aged 10, and was held in a windowless cell under the garage of a private house until she escaped in Aug. 2006. Her captor Wolfgang Priklopil committed suicide hours later.
Prosecutors have accused his friend Ernst Holzapfel of being an accessory to the cover up of the kidnap. Priklopil telephoned Holzapfel after Kampusch's escape to ask for help a few hours before he committed suicide.
Holzapfel, who will be tried by the Vienna regional court, has denied the charges but said publicly shortly after Kampusch escaped that he had met her unwittingly once when Priklopil visited him.
"(He) is a pawn that they are now trying to use -- with all force and in retrospect -- to justify reopening the investigation," his lawyer was quoted as saying by the Austria Press Agency.
The case was reopened after an internal investigation concluded that several possible leads had been ignored by Austrian authorities.
Kampusch has said Priklopil acted alone but welcomed the reopening of the search for possible accomplices.
She has kept up a prominent media profile since her escape. She has hosted a talk show, her memoirs will be published in September and a film about her will be released in 2012.
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