VIENNA, April 21: A Viennese schoolgirl held in captivity for eight years by a man who later took his life is suing a newspaper for disclosing intimate details of what went on between victim and captor, her lawyer said on Monday.

Natascha Kampusch was 10 when Wolfgang Priklopil abducted her on her way to school in 1998 and she was not heard of again until she managed to escape in 2006. The 44-year-old kidnapper killed himself just hours after she fled by throwing himself under a train.

Attorney Gerald Ganzger said his client, now 19, was taking the free newspaper Heute (Today) to court for publishing a story last Friday, saying it violated his client's right to privacy.

Heute printed lengthy extracts from a police report on what went on between the girl and her abductor. Kampusch had always insisted she wished to keep these details private.

Priklopil, a telecommunications technician, seized Kampusch on March 2, 1998, bundling her into a white van.

He imprisoned her for eight years in an underground, sound-proofed five-square-meter basement cell in a suburban house, allowing her out only to perform chores.

She escaped when Priklopil let his attention drop as she was vacuuming his car.

Press reports just after she escaped said Kampusch may have had sexual relations with Priklopil and that they were “voluntary,” following similar claims by a policewoman who spoke to her. But investigators would not confirm this.

During the investigation, police were at pains to keep all the evidence of intimate details under wraps, including film taken by Priklopil.

But Heute gained access to the police report in which the policewoman, Sabine Freudenberger, who interviewed her immediately after her escape, outlined what had happened during the captivity.

Ganzger told the Austrian news agency APA his client was also filing a complaint against persons unknown for violation of professional secrets in leaking the report to the press.

In December a court ordered Heute to pay 13,000 euros ($18,700) damages to Kampusch after it published pictures of her dancing with a male companion at a Vienna disco.

The pictures were subsequently taken up by a number of mass-circulation dailies around Europe, including the Daily Mail in Britain and Bild in Germany.

Investigators believed Priklo-pil was acting alone and eventually closed the case. However others including Natascha’s father believe he may have had collaborators.

Chancellor Alfred Gusen-bauer said in February that Austria may compensate Kampusch because of police negligence in the search for her.

A parliamentary commission is probing the police investigation and has revealed that an officer questioned Priklopil just a month after the girl went missing and reported his suspicions but was ignored by his superiors.

—AFP