BERLIN, March 22 — The man who kidnapped Austrian teenager Natascha Kampusch and locked her in a basement for eight years also filmed humiliating videos of her, according to a book published yesterday.

Kampusch was abducted from a Vienna street in 1998 at the age of 10 and kept in a basement until she re-emerged in 2006, in a case that made headlines around the world. 

Her kidnapper, unemployed telecom engineer Wolfgang Priklopil, routinely abused her and, on the day she escaped, committed suicide by throwing himself under a train.

Almost a decade on, German journalist and former police investigator Peter Reichard has published new details on the ordeal of Kampusch, now 28, in a book entitled The Whole Shameful Truth.

He wrote that, contrary to earlier reports, videos found in Priklopil’s house showed how he tormented his young victim in front of a camera on a tripod which was recording.

According to extracts published by Bild daily, one video showed Natascha at age 12 “naked, undernourished, her ribs visible” being forced to run up and down a staircase.

Another video shows her with shaven head and given only a single slice of bread to eat as her sadistic captor yells insults at her, demanding “a glass of water, you dumb cow”.

Reichard wrote the book with the consent of Kampusch, who has also written about her experience and given several television interviews. 

Her story has been told in the movie 3096 Days, named after the length of her imprisonment. — AFP