'Cannibal trial' evidence due

A verdict was expected today in the murder trial of a German cannibal.

Armin Meiwes, 42, has confessed to killing a man he met over the Internet and eating his flesh.

However, his lawyer Harald Ermel has argued that the death was “homicide on demand” – a form of mercy killing – because the victim had given his consent to be killed and eaten. That would carry a maximum five year prison sentence.

When his trial opened last month at the state court in the central city of Kassel, Meiwes confessed in detail to the March 2001 killing of 43-year-old Bernd Juergen Brandes at his home in the nearby town of Rotenburg.

He said Brandes, who travelled from Berlin after answering Meiwes’ Internet postings, wanted to be stabbed to death after drinking a bottle of cold medicine to lose consciousness.

A grisly video Meiwes made of the act was shown to the court in a closed session earlier in the trial.

A doctor testified that Brandes died from loss of blood and that the medication, along with a half-bottle of liquor and 20 sleeping pills he took beforehand, could not have lessened his pain.

Several experts have testified that Meiwes was fit to stand trial and was not mentally ill.

Police tracked down and arrested Meiwes in December 2002 after a student in Austria alerted them to a message Meiwes had posted on the Internet seeking a man willing to be killed and eaten.

On Monday, Meiwes said in his closing statement: “I had my big kick and I don’t need to do it again.”

He said his victim “came to me of his own free will to end his life. For him, it was a nice death”.

He added that he now regrets the killing.

However, prosecutor Marcus Koehler said that Meiwes should spend life behind bars for murder.