Articles | Far-right leader dies in car crash

Far-right leader dies in car crash

Published: Saturday, 11 October 2008, 8:06AM

Austrian far-right leader Jörg Haider has died in a car accident near his home town of Klagenfurt.

Haider, 58, who led the far-right into a coalition government from 2000-2006, drew international condemnation with his anti-immigrant statements and flirtation with Nazi sympathies.

The governor of Austria's Carinthia province died after suffering major head and chest injuries when the government car he was driving went out of control and rolled down an embankment, police said. He was alone in the car.

Haider had been heading to a town near Klagenfurt for a gathering of his family to mark his mother's 90th birthday.

Police say they are investigating the cause of the crash.

Haider was born in Upper Austria. His father was a former member of Hitler's brownshirts and his mother was a teacher who had been a Hitler Youth leader.

The father-of-two became a full-time politician in 1977 for the far-right Freedom Party, and led the party into a coalition government with the conservative People's Party in 2000, triggering temporary European Union sanctions against Austria.

Haider formed the breakaway Alliance for the Future of Austria in 2005. His new party became junior partner in the coalition government, while the Freedom Party left and went into opposition.

The Alliance was one of two far-right groups that surged to a combined 30 per cent of the vote in a parliamentary election last month, potentially redrawing Austria's political landscape.

Haider once criticised Austria's government for failing to implement the "proper labour policies" of Adolf Hitler's Nazi Germany. On another occasion he referred to Nazi concentration camps as "penal camps".