One of Europe’s most controversial political figures, Joerg Haider, has been killed in a car crash. He was fifty-eight.

The far-right Austrian leader of the BZO party was alone in his vehicle when it left the road for an as yet unknown reason and rolled over several times in the southern city of Klagenfurt.

He sustained severe head and chest injuries and died shortly after the crash. Only last month his party tripled its election score to twelve percent, giving the far right parties in Austria thirty percent of the vote.

Haider became a full-time politician in nineteen seventy seven in the right-wing Freedom party, and when in two thousand it entered a coalition government with the conservatives, Austria was hit with EU sanctions.

He was notable for his opposition to immigration, and verbal outbursts, like calling Hitler’s labour policies “proper”, concentration camps “penal” camps, and a widely-condemned meeting with Saddam Hussein in two thousand and two a “purely humanitarian” matter.

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