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30. 11. 09. - 13:00

Kampusch mum 'bad childhood' trial set for Christmas Eve

By Thomas Hochwarter

The head of a commission investigating the police handling of the Natascha Kampusch kidnap case is to appear in court on Christmas Eve charged with defamation, it has emerged.

Vienna Criminal Court spokesman Christian Gneist announced today (Mon) Ludwig Adamovich was due in court from 9am on 24 December. He added the trial is scheduled to last two hours that day.

Brigitta Sirny, the mother of "cellar girl" Natascha Kampusch, is suing Adamovich – former president of the Austrian Constitutional Court – over what she claimed was "incredible breach of taboo" when he suggested in a newspaper interview that what Kampusch had experienced during her eight-year captivity might not have been as bad as her childhood.

Meanwhile a neighbour of Natascha Kampusch’s family at the time the girl was snatched off the street aged ten has claimed Sirny knew pervert jailer Wolfgang Priklopil before he kidnapped her daughter.

"Natascha suffered a lot at home. It was always just about the money for her mother," Anneliese Glaser said.

Investigations into the case and possible cover-ups by officials are ongoing.

German police recently confiscated documents and a hard drive at a man’s Tengen flat. Thomas Vogel claimed he possessed paedophile sex videos recorded in the cellar dungeon in Strasshof, Lower Austria, where Kampusch was forced to live in for eight years, showing her and two men.

Kampusch, 21, has maintained she knew of no one but Priklopil who was involved in her kidnap and imprisonment but has said she has nothing against further investigations.

Priklopil committed suicide on the day she escaped in summer 2006.

Austrian Times

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1. Kampusch kidnapper pal faces trial

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