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Joerg Haider was drinking in a gay bar before he crashed
The Austrian far-Right politician Joerg Haider was seen drinking in a gay bar shortly before his fatal car crash.
Last Updated: 5:39PM BST 17 Oct 2008
The Austrian far-Right politician Joerg Haider was over the legal drinking limit when he died in a car crash, a party official has said. Austrian media reported that the amount of alcohol in Haider's blood was nearly four times the legal limit. Photo: Reuters
Mr Haider, 58, was killed in the early hours of last Saturday when the car he was driving at 88mph, around twice the speed limit, crashed off a road in the southern province of Carinthia, where he served as governor.
Austrian media reported that the amount of alcohol in Mr Haider's blood was nearly four times the legal limit.
The politician, who was married with two daughters but was rumoured throughout his career to be a closet homosexual, spent the last part of his night alive in Stadtkraemer, a popular gay club in Klagenfurt. He arrived at Stadtkraemer at a quarter past midnight after having visited another nightclub, and left thirty minutes later, the public prosecutor in Klagenfurt said.
Mr Haider's charismatic populism was instrumental in moving anti- immigrant politics from Europe's fringes towards the mainstream and breaking the grip on government of established centrist parties which he said had lost touch with the people.
A public funeral for the politician, who was both divisive and enduringly popular in Austria, is to be held today in Klagenfurt, Carinthia, where he had been governor since 1999.
Thousands of Left-wing demonstrators have threatened to protest outside Mr Haider's funeral and all police leave in Austria has been cancelled in anticipation of clashes.