as all this happened in austria we can ignore all that tedious nonsense about 'alleged crime ' and find the man guilty without the time wasting formality of a charge and then a trial.

david c, purbeck,

"After every tragedy.. pundits demand: what does this say about us? The answer should be - nothing."

A society where lunatics are undetectable, and their actions ignored, deserves all it gets. Refusing to research the brain disorder involved is like attributing plagues to witchcraft or bad luck.

iain carstairs, bedford, uk

so in Austria it is 15 years for a rape?Are Austrian authorities now at least multpilying those rapes by numbers?To make it easier for them by my calculations 7 rapes * 15 = 105 years behind bars. And I will not even try to calculate 24 years, 3 times per week as reported.

Anita, Adelaide, Australia

It makes a change for Mick Hume to speak sense about a serious topic, normally he resorts to pointlessly snide attacks on ephemera. However on this topic he is spot on. Fritzl is a one off sicko, his crimes are uniquely depraved even by the standards of paedophiles and should be treated as such.

Stu, London,

Josef Fritzl is not mad, he is not an unreconstituted Nazi and he does not reflect the overwhelmingly vast majority of people the world through. He is an evil aberration, who has no sense of responsibilty, common decency or morality. He is a thug and a bully. He must face the death penalty.

Karen Miles, London, UK

Thank goodness for a little bit of perspective.

BQ, Perth, Australia

This is absurd thinking - typically British retorics. To spy on your neighbours out of curiosity is a different thing than not to react to strange noises that come each night from a cellar of your apartment. We in Belgium have ID cards but the society is far more non-conformist than the British one

Erno, Brussels, Belgium

this sort of thinking has what let that 'humanbeing' go on with his disgusting acts for 24 years. His tenants, his neighbors, his relatives, even his own wife did not ever wonder or 'dared' to intrude upon his privacy inspite of their suspicions. u prefer privacy to the destruction of innocent lives

venus, visakhapatnam, india

Just because things go on behind closed doors it does not make it right. Privacy is one thing, sadistic, cruel and inhumane acts are another. When I hear that legally he may be sentenced for up to 15 years after imprisoning his own for over 24 then maybe Mick Hume should be addressing this instead

Mark Harris, Swansea, Wales

Finally someone is speaking out for liberty and non-interference of the state. Makes for good reading in such an age.

Thank you.

phil, Hexham,

Thank goodness for someone with common sense at last!. Haven't the British always valued privacy:"My home is my castle", "LIve and let live"? Because it's Austria, it is suddenly wrong! And cellars in Austria are the equivalent of an Englishman's garden shed - NOT for women!!

Christine Taylor, Stoke-on-Trent, England

And when we're done checking every Austrian cellar, European cellar, Austrailian and American cellars, perhaps we can refocus our attention on stopping the atrocities our governments perpetrate for oil and greed. When I think of horror cellars, Abu Ghraib jumps to the forefront.

Joanna , Lexington, MA, USA

From fear, control is born. If the terrorist isn't enough to make us want to give the powers that be the 'right' to search our phone records, nut jobs like Fritzl will do. The last two gererations had the Fritz and the Reds. We have terrorists, murderers, rapists and kidnappers to scare us.

Tallulah Caunter, Battle, UK