Josef Fritzl was dubbed a "monster" by Austria's press Friday, proclaiming the life sentence handed down by a jury as the only possible punishment after he raped his daughter at will for 24 years.

"The Sentence: Life!" rejoiced the country's biggest-selling daily, Kronen Zeitung, on its front page.

"Life For the 24 Years He Spent as a Monster!"

Another mass circulation daily, Oesterreich, trumpeted "Jail Until He Dies" while the headline of Heute read "Life for Fritzl -- That's The Way," along with a picture of Hieronymous Bosch's painting "The Last Judgement".

Fritzl, a 73-year-old retired electrician, was found guilty Thursday of holding his daughter Elisabeth as a sex slave in a cramped windowless dungeon for 24 years, raping her thousands of times, fathering seven children with her and letting one of the new-born babies die.

He was sentenced by a court in Sankt Poelten, Lower Austria, to life and is to be interned in a mental institute.

The tone of the broadsheets was more subdued, with Der Standard and Die Presse still referring to the defendant only as Josef F. and devoting only a small space on their front pages to the verdict, but providing much more extensive coverage of the trial inside.

In its leader column, Der Standard praised the professional way in which the Austrian justice system had handled the case.

The daily Kurier, in its leader column, wrote: "The judges played it safe in the case of the man who deceived everybody."

AFP