Kampusch: FBI Dossier to Reveal Police Cover Up
A secret FBI report into police cover-ups over the kidnapping of cellar prison victim Natascha Kampusch is due to be made public this month (April).
Austrian justice officials were forced to call in neutral investigators from the US agency after Natatscha’s father Ludwig Koch accused local police of a cover up because of political interference.
His claims were detailed in his best selling book ‘Missing’, based on 57,000 police files put in the public domain by his lawyer.
Natascha’s father claims that police were ordered to cover up bungles in the original investigation to protect the discredited Interior Minister Liese Prokop from a political scandal in an election year (2006).
“It may sound unbelievable but everything in the book is taken directly from the more than 57,000 police files that were leaked to my legal team.
“It’s not my words. They are facts and evidence from those files,” said Koch of the blockbusting book.
Victim Natascha was snatched off the streets of a Vienna suburb as a 10-year-old girl on her way to school.
She escaped eight-and-a-half years later after enduring years of confinement in a basement cell and sexual abuse at the hands of her abductor Wolfgang Priklopil.
A movie of her ordeal ‘3096 Days’ was released worldwide earlier this year starting Northern Ireland actress Antonia Campbell-Hughes.
Pervert Priklopil took his secrets to the grave when he hurled himself under a train just hours after Natascha escaped while he was making a phone call.
Next month’s FBI report is also expected to unlock a civil legal case against Priklopil’s best friend Ernst Holzapfel.
Court papers submitted by Koch have identified Holzapfel as an accomplice in the kidnap.
Now Natascha’s father is expecting the FBI report to strengthen his case.
“What Ludwig has said all along and what he says in the book is that the police always knew someone else was involved,” explained one family friend.
“The first time they investigated, the police were lazy and incompetent. Then when she escaped they covered it up because it was too scandalous to admit.
“Now he hopes the truth will finally be dragged kicking and screaming into the daylight.
“Ludwig is, rightly, proud of the way he has helped to make this happen first with his tireless campaigning, and then with his book,” they added.
Koch himself explained: “The FBI report can’t come to any conclusion other than the fact that there was massive interference and errors in the case.”
And he says he helped release the 57,000 files to the FBI team to make sure Austrian authorities could no longer keep them secret.
“I have made sure that the FBI also got plenty of paperwork which I’m sure the Interior Ministry were not too enthusiastic about them seeing.
“I hope that finally there will now be justice and that the truth will come out,” he said.
“And I also hope it will improve the chances of the court case’s success so we can finally go ahead once we have the report.
“I can’t do more than I have. But win or lose, I will have made sure that the information I have has been recorded for the history books – where the ultimate judgement will take place,” added Natascha’s father.