A FORMER nunnery that has been converted into a comfortable modern prison is expected to be chosen by Josef Fritzl as the place in which to serve his life sentence.

Fritzl, 73, who was jailed last week for murder, rape, enslavement, coercion and incest after locking his daughter in his cellar for 24 years and fathering seven children by her, six of whom survived, is free under Austrian law to choose from three prisons that offer special sections for “psychologically abnormal” convicts.

According to his lawyer, Rudolf Mayer, he will select Garsten, a former Benedictine convent about 30 minutes’ drive from the house in the provincial town of Amstetten, where he held his daughter Elisabeth prisoner from the age of 18 and sexually abused her an estimated 3,000 times.

In Garsten he will be able to improve his English or study other foreign languages, as well as singing in the choir or training in a gym that is better-equipped than those of many hotels. As an inmate, he will be offered a wide variety of hobbies and entertainment, including tennis, darts and art classes.

The prison, set in woodland in the foothills of the Alps and considered one of the best in Austria, provides inmates with the light and fresh air that Fritzl’s victims were deprived of in their dank cellar.

Fritzl, an engineer who could in theory be released on parole after 15 years, will be able to indulge his passion for reading, as Garsten has one of the largest prison libraries in the country.

His fellow inmates will include a former TV presenter, Helmut Frodl, serving life for murdering a rival and dismembering his body with a chainsaw. Frodl is working on a PhD and is allowed out twice a month with an escort to discuss his thesis with a professor.

“The Austrian penal system aims not only at enforcing punishment, but also attempts to bring the inmate back within the norms of society,” said a spokesman for Austrian prisons last week when asked whether it was right that Fritzl should enjoy such a lax regime.

This week Fritzl will be taken to a clinic in Vienna, where psychia-trists will decide what kind of treatment would be appropriate before sending him to serve his sentence.

Elisabeth, 42, and her six children are facing an uncertain future. The family have been given new identities and were moved to a secret location but tabloid newspaper reporters tracked them down and are said to have broken in to take photographs.

The family are now back in the psychiatric clinic where they were treated on their release. Their therapy and living costs are being funded by the state.

Elisabeth and two adult children aged 18 and 19 are believed to be too traumatised to work. Should their father become too frail or senile to serve out his remaining sentence, he will be transferred to a prison retirement home, where he will be cared for by nurses for the rest of his life.

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