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Amstetten: Long-lost members of an Austrian family terrorised by decades of incest and imprisonment had an "astonishing" reunion at the clinic where psychiatrists are helping them cope, authorities said on Tuesday.
Hospital officials said most of the seven children Josef Fritzl fathered over the past 24 years with the daughter he held captive in a windowless cell spent their first moments together on Sunday, a day after those kept confined finally gained their freedom.
The meeting also reunited the suspect's wife with the daughter Fritzl had led her to believe left home to join a religious cult, but instead was imprisoned in a cramped warren of secured and soundproofed cellar rooms, clinic director Berthold Kepplinger told reporters.
"It is astonishing how easy it worked that the children came together, and also it was astonishing how easy it happened that the grandmother and the mother came together," Kepplinger said. Under the circumstances, the children were doing "quite well" in the care of a team of specialists, he said.
Officials said one of the children, who is receiving medical treatment at another hospital, was not part of the reunion.
Police announced on Tuesday that DNA tests confirmed Fritzl is the biological father of all his daughter's six surviving children.
Investigators said they also combed through Fritzl's other properties but found no other hidden windowless cells like the one where he had held his daughter Elisabeth, now 42, captive since she was 18.
Fritzl's lawyer, Rudolf Mayer, said his client also was under psychiatric care. Asked whether he showed any remorse, Mayer said only, "I cannot say at this point."
Fritzl "is really hit by this. He is very serious, but he is emotionally broken," Mayer told The Associated Press.
However, prosecutor Gerhard Sedlacek said Fritzl was "completely calm, completely without emotion" when he was formally placed in pretrial detention Tuesday.
Meanwhile, about 200 people, many holding candles, gathered for a vigil in Amstetten's main square late on Tuesday. In steady rain, they sang hymns and prayed for the victims.
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