Josef Fritzl wants to move to Britain if he is released and roam free in the Scottish Highlands
25 March 2024, 10:54
Josef Fritzl has threatened to move to Britain if he is ever released from jail and "roam free on the Highlands of Scotland".
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Fritzl, 88, has been incarcerated since 2009 after holding his daughter Elisabeth captive in his cellar in the Austrian town of Amstetten for 24 years between 1984 and 2008, raping her thousands of times and fathering her seven children.
He is now able to apply for release and said he dreamed of moving to the UK after seeing a documentary about Shakespeare that revealed Britain's "spectacular scenery", the Sun reports.
He recalled: “I was filled with this wonderful, uplifting feeling, this sense of inspiration for this fantastic culture.
"And it was then I knew that when I get released, it is not Austria I want to stay, rather I want to emigrate to the UK
“Above all I want to roam free on the wild Highlands of Scotland.”
He added in an interview: “For me the lush green fields of Wales are also very, very appealing. But the main thing is — it’s to the United Kingdom that I am headed.”
Even in the unlikely event Fritzl was released he would be unable to move to the UK as the Home Office would refuse to grant him entry due to his long custodial sentence.
Under British law anyone who has “received a custodial sentence of 12 months or more” is unable to move to the UK.
A court in the town of Krems an der Donau had ordered in January that Fritzl be transferred to a regular prison from a prison psychiatric unit after being told he was "no longer at threat of reoffending", but this decision has since been overturned.
His daughter Elisabeth, who is now 56 and has been given a new identity, previously said she hopes her evil father will be punished for his crimes "until death".
Fritzl's trial heard he raped her 3,000 times in the rat-infested cellar and how he beat and kicked her and eventually had seven children with her.
The mother lived downstairs in the flat with her children - Kerstin born in 1988, Stefan (1990) and Felix (2002).
Meanwhile Lisa (1992), Monica (1994) and Alexander (1996) were raised upstairs in the home Fritzl shared with his wife Rosemarie in sleepy Amstetten in central Austria, 48 miles from Linz.
