German cannibal in court to face retrial over killing

A GERMAN cannibal was led handcuffed into court yesterday for a retrial to determine whether killing a man who wanted to be eaten amounts to murder.

Armin Meiwes, a computer repairman who cut up and consumed a man he had met via the internet, was first sentenced in January 2004 to eight-and- a-half years for manslaughter, but the Supreme Court ruled last April that the verdict was too lenient and ordered a retrial.

Gory details of the crime have transfixed the public in Germany and beyond, while legal experts have puzzled over when a killing can be called murder if the victim wanted to die.

Prosecutor Marcus Koehler read out the indictment as Mr Meiwes, 44, sat back and listened.

Mr Meiwes has admitted killing Berlin-based computer specialist Bernd-Juergen Brandes, 42, but had initially been spared a murder conviction and a possible life sentence because the victim had asked to be eaten.

Prosecutors argued that he should have been found guilty of murder as he had killed to satisfy perverted desires.

Defence counsel Harald Ermel has argued that Mr Meiwes’s sole motive was to meet the wishes of his victim and that his crime was only “killing on request”, a form of illegal euthanasia that carries a maximum five-year sentence.

Mr Koehler told the court Mr Meiwes took Brandt to his home in Rotenburg, Germany, on March 9, 2001, having agreed the plan over the internet.

In a ‘slaughter room’ fitted out with a butcher’s bench, meat hook and cage, Mr Meiwes severed Brandt’s penis and they both tried to eat it. Hours later, as Brandt fell unconscious through blood loss, Mr Meiwes slit his throat and chopped off his head.

“He [subsequently] watched the video of the killing of Brandt for his sexual pleasure,” Mr Koehler told the court.

The higher court said the original court had ignored the fact that Mr Meiwes had filmed the slaying for sexual gratification. Psychiatrists found Mr Meiwes deeply disturbed but sane.