In pictures: Josef Fritzl trial

An Austrian court has sentenced Josef Fritzl, who kept his daughter in a cellar and fathered her seven children, to life after convicting him of murder, rape, enslavement and other charges.

The retired engineer will serve his life sentence in a secure psychiatric facility. His crimes only came to light last year after he took one of the imprisoned children to hospital for treatment.

Fritzl's defence lawyer, Rudolf Mayer, said his client felt he had received a fair sentence "after confessing to 3,000 instances of rapes, 24 years of captivity in a cellar plus murder".

Judges in the small town of St Poelten passed down their sentence after a trial which lasted just four days.

Fritzl pleaded guilty to all the charges against him on the third day of his trial.

For the first two days of the trial, Fritzl shielded his face from the press because, his lawyers said, he was "simply ashamed".

He had initially pleaded guilty to incest, coercion and rape, but denied charges of enslavement and the murder by neglect of one of the babies born to his daughter.

But on day three of the trial, he changed his plea, telling the judges: "I plead guilty to the crimes I've been charged with... I'm sorry."

The trial has attracted huge media attention, but journalists were barred from the courtroom while recorded testimony from Fritzl's daughter was played to jurors.

There have also been daily protests outside the courtroom by people demanding to know how such crimes could have gone on for so long without being detected.