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Kampusch kidnapper mate trial date set

Viennese legal officials said today (Thurs) a trial against the best pal of Natascha Kampusch�s kidnapper will take place next month.

State prosecution officials revealed in March that Ernst Holzapfel was facing charges for complicity in suicide. Now they have announced that the trial against the best friend and close business partner of pervert Wolfgang Priklopil will get underway in Vienna on 30 August.

Holzapfel is accused of obstructing police work for not helping to save Priklopil's life on the day Kampusch managed to escape his clutches in summer 2006. Ernst Holzapfel was not regarded as a suspect when investigators interviewed him earlier this year, but the Vienna businessman gave contradictory statements.

Holzapfel told investigators that Priklopil had never told him about the kidnapping. He however later admitted that his sick mate had poured out his heart about the kidnapping on 23 August 2006, the day Kampusch fled from his house in Strasshof an der Nordbahn in Lower Austria just outside Vienna.

Holzapfel told police: "Priklopil urged me to meet him at the Donauzentrum (shopping centre in Vienna-Donaustadt) that day. When I got there, he asked me to get into his car quickly and to switch off my mobile so we could talk undisturbed.

"Priklopil claimed he drunkenly sped off from a police traffic check. I tried to calm him down by talking business and eventually appealed to him to hand himself in. I knew him as a serious person, so I was convinced he would do so."

Priklopil killed himself hours later by jumping in front of a train just hours after Kampusch had fled his estate. He had kept her in a self-made dungeon cellar for more than eight years after being snatched off the road on her way to school in Vienna at the age of 10.

Austrian authorities ended investigations of the case in January after they were restarted last year in order to clarify claims police had not thoroughly checked on tip-offs that could have led to kidnapper Priklopil. Prosecutors meanwhile said they could rule out that Priklopil had accomplices.

Kampusch lives in Vienna today. She recently publicly backed animal rights organisation PETA and revealed she has become a vegetarian. The 21-year-old is currently working on her autobiography "3096 Tage" (3,096 Days) set for a release this September.

German producer Bernd Eichinger � whose movie "Der Untergang" (Downfall) about the last days of Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler caused controversy in 2004 � meanwhile revealed he has been cooperating with Kampusch over turning the story of her life into a film.

Austrian Times

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