Josef Fritzl sentenced to life

Josef Fritzl, the Austrian man who locked his daughter in a cellar for 24 years and fathered seven children by her, has been sentenced to life imprisonment after being convicted of a string of crimes, including murder, rape and slavery.

After hearing the sentence he told the court that he accepted the verdict and would not appeal. He will be sent to a secure psychiatric facility, as recommended by a court doctor.

He dramatically switched his pleas to guilty midway through his trial on the murder and slavery charges after watching taped evidence from his daughter Elisabeth, who he abducted in 1984 when she was just 18. He had already admitted rape, incest, false imprisonment and coercion.

The murder charge related to the death of one of the children that Elisabeth gave birth to during her ordeal, and whose body Fritzl burned.

The court was played several hours of her testimony in which she outlined the abuse she suffered at the hands of her father while locked in the secret cellar beneath Fritzl's home in Amstetten.

After watching the evidence Fritzl was moved to change his pleas. He claimed that watching the harrowing evidence had made him face up to "my sick behaviour".

"I'm sorry," he said. He realised "for the first time how cruel I was".

It also emerged that Elisabeth, now 42, had been secretly smuggled into court on Tuesday, to face her father for the first time since she was freed from the cellar in April last year. Fritzl, 73, asked to see a psychiatrist following her one-hour visit, during which she silently observed his reactions to her evidence.

There was speculation that his about-turn was a calculated attempt to influence the court's decision on where he will serve his expected life sentence.

Reports in Austrian newspapers have claimed his lawyer has tried to negotiate a move to a prison or psychiatric hospital where Fritzl, who lives in fear of being attacked, would have his own cell.