Man faces Internet cannibalism trial

A German man accused of killing, dismembering and eating the flesh of another man who consented to the arrangement over the Internet goes on trial for murder today.

Proceedings against the 41-year-old computer expert, Armin Meiwes, 41, will begin at the state court in the city of Kassel.

Prosecutors accuse Meiwes of killing a 43-year-old from Berlin, identified only as Bernd Juergen B, in March 2001, by stabbing him in the throat at his home in the town of Rotenburg.

Prosecutors say the killing was carried out with the victim’s consent. But they have classified it as murder, not as a form of mercy killing, arguing that the evidence indicated it was carried out at the suspect’s initiative.

The suspect allegedly chopped the body into pieces, deep-froze parts of it and buried the rest, capturing the crime on a videotape which is being used as evidence.

He faces a life prison sentence if convicted of the killing, which prosecutors say was sexually motivated.

Police tracked down and arrested Meiwes in December last year after a student in Austria alerted them to an advertisement he had placed on the Internet seeking a man willing to be killed and eaten.

Police who searched the man’s home found human flesh and bones.