Austrian ex-judo champion Peter Seisenbacher freed after serving time for sex abuse

Austrian former Olympic judo champion Peter Seisenbacher was released from jail on Friday after serving time for sexually abusing two girls he coached. Seisenbacher was conditionally freed after he served more than two-thirds of his five-year penalty, Styria province court spokeswoman Barbara Schwarz told AFP. His lawyer, Bernhard Lehofer, confirmed the 62-year-old was released on Friday. Austrian law stipulates that a prisoner will be released after two-thirds of the imposed sentence has been served -- unless there are special reasons to fear that the person will commit another crime.

An Austrian court in 2019 sentenced Seisenbacher to five years in jail after he was found guilty of sexually abusing two girls from the late 1990s to the early 2000s. He abused one of the two girls from the age of nine with the abuse lasting several years, according to the verdict. The second girl was 13 when the abuse started. A third woman testified Seisenbacher tried to sexually abuse her at a holiday camp when she was 16.

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Seisenbacher, who was facing a maximum penalty of 10 years, had said that he was innocent of the charges at the start of the trial. In 2020, Austria's top court dismissed his appeal. Prosecutors in Vienna issued an international warrant for his arrest after he failed to show up for a 2016 court hearing in Vienna.

Seisenbacher was located in Ukraine in 2017 after seven months on the run and handed over to Austria in 2019. He won middleweight gold at the Los Angeles Olympic Games in 1984 and again in Seoul four years later.