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06. 05. 08. - 17:25

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06. 05. 08. - 17:25

Media frenzy in Amstetten - PICTURE

© EuroPics[CEN]

by Thomas Hochwarter

Amstetten's incest family are prisoners a second time - trapped in their hospital ward and unable even to go to the windows because the area has been mobbed by the media.

Despite a plea for the family to be left in peace, by this (TUE) morning police had arrested 13 photographers dressed in camouflage gear to climb trees, wearing fake police uniforms and posing as cleaning staff.

Hospital spokesman Klaus Schwertner said: "Elisabeth Fritzl is very worried about her daughter but it is not possible at this time for her to leave. The risk of the media spotting her is very high and she could suffer a ‘secondary trauma’.

"The massive media interest in the case and especially in the victims is one of the reasons why a meeting between Elisabeth Fritzl and her daughter Kerstin is not planned at the moment."

The story of Elisabeth Fritzl who was locked in a secret cellar dungeon and repeatedly raped by her father over 24 years, having 7 children, resulted in hundreds of media organisations sending staff to Amstetten.

Three of the children spent their lives in the cellar and three were released to live with their grandparents. Of the cellar children the oldest, 19-year-old Kerstin, is being kept at another nearby hospital and is still in a coma in a critical condition.
Last weekend, a Catholic priest who was also a close friend of the family gave the last rites to the 19-year-old who had spent her entire life in the cellar.

A local police spokesman said of the problems with the media: "One of the arrested snappers was dressed up as a cleaner, another one as a policeman. Members of a Belgian TV crew even got into a fight with a member of staff after he tried to get them to leave - and they refused."

Hospital spokesman Klaus Schwertner confirmed the TV crew "did not want to leave the hospital property" and got into a scuffle with a hospital employee. Schwertner said: "Many of the photographers arrested had no ID and refused to say for whom they were working - they would not identify themselves."

Schwertner refused to identify those that had given their names, nor would he say which country they were from.

Now police members of Austria’s elite anti-terror Cobra unit are on patrol at the hospital equipped with thermal imaging cameras to spot photographers in camouflage gear in trees, and guard dogs have been deployed in the grounds.

They are being reinforced by private security guards hired by the hospital, as well as the clinic's in house fire brigade that have gone on duty as security staff.

The situation around the school the Fritzl children Lisa, 15, Monika, 14, and Alexander, 12, attend is similar. Security guards have been placed to protect the pupils from the media as journalists are trying to get in at all costs.

"My child forgot his lunch box," one said, and another claimed that he had "to pick up his child as it fell ill," but both were denied access as they could not give a real name for the alleged children.

And it is not just the media. Amstetten lies just a short distance off the main Salzburg to Vienna motorway - and every day hundreds of onlookers are coming off the motorway to get a look at Ybbstrasse 40.

Deputy mayor of Amstetten, Ursula Puchebener, branded them "disaster tourists" who wanted to see the city’s "House of horror".

But many locals are not complaining. One Ybbsstrasse resident is renting his balcony which offers a view on the entry to the Fritzl dungeon to camera teams for 150 Euros per hour and tourists for 50 Euros.

An elderly woman said: "I don’t like the mood here at the moment. It seems my hometown is full of villains."

Rudolf Decker, manager of four-star hotel "Exel" said he had the unusual position of having to recommend other hotels in the region because his own is now full up. He said: "This never happened before. We weren’t even near to such a situation. Amstetten is a nice town but it is anything other than a tourist hotspot. Now we are on the map - but not for the type of tourism we want."

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