An Austrian court has overturned a decision to transfer 88-year-old incestuous rapist Josef Fritzl to a regular prison from a prison psychiatric ward.
Fritzl held his daughter Elisabeth captive for 24 years between 1984 and 2008, raping her thousands of times and fathering her seven children.
He has been in prison since 2009 after being convicted of rape, incest, slavery, coercion and murder by neglecting his newborn son.
Elisabeth, now 56 and given a new identity, has previously said she hopes her evil father will be punished for his crimes ‘to the death’.
But in January the court in the city of Krems an der Donau ordered Fritzl to be transferred after a closed hearing was told he was ‘no longer at risk of reoffending’.
Prosecutors responded by filing a complaint seeking to overturn the ruling, and the case has now been sent back to the lower court for a new decision.
Fritzl raped his daughter and held her captive for 24 years and fathered her seven children (file photo shows him appearing in court in 2009)
Elisabeth Fritzl (pictured as a schoolgirl), now 56, was held captive by her father Jozef in the basement of the family’s Austrian home from 1984 to 2008
The court in Vienna said today that it had overturned the decision to transfer Fritzl and ordered the lower court to establish more facts before reaching a new decision.
“Unlike the court of first instance, the Vienna Higher Provincial Court came to the conclusion that the facts necessary for such conditional release were not yet fully established,” the Vienna court said in a statement.
A lower court spokesman said the decision is expected in April.
The court in Krems ordered the conditional transfer of Fritzl from the prison for ‘mentally abnormal’ inmates, where he has been since 2009.
But prosecutors, who were not involved in the case, objected and a higher court in Vienna will now hear the appeal.
Fritzl’s lawyer Astrid Wagner told MailOnline: ‘The prosecution can try but they won’t win, their case doesn’t stand a chance.
‘It will just add another few months, but I’m sure he will be moved.
“I spoke to him after the news of the objection as he was puzzled by it but I told him there was nothing to worry about and he would be fine.”
His trial heard that he raped her 3,000 times in the rat-infested basement and how he punched and kicked her and eventually fathered seven children with her.
The mother lived downstairs in the apartment 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, 78 miles from Linz.
Elisabeth and three of her children lived in the basement of the family home in Amstetten, Austria, while Fritzl and his wife Rosemarie lived upstairs
Fritzl is seen during day four of his trial at the High Court in St. Poelten on 19 March 2009 in St. Poelten, Austria
Another son, named Micheal, tragically died of neglect shortly after he was born.
Elisabeth spoke through her lawyer Eva Plaz during her father’s trial that she hopes he will never be released.
“She wants the defendant to be held accountable until death,” Ms Plaz said.
The lawyer had previously told the court: ‘The defendant has made himself master of life and death. He must be punished for that.’
Fritzl, who has now changed his name to one that has not been published, has been in prison since his conviction in 2009 for incest, rape, slavery, coercion and the murder by neglect of his newborn son.