Cannibal jailed

May 10 2006
Armin Meiwes waits for the verdict in his retrial at a regional court in Frankfurt on Tuesday.
Photo: AP

A German self-confessed cannibal was jailed for life after a court in Frankfurt found him guilty of murder for killing and partly eating an allegedly willing victim he had met on the internet.

The court in the western German city of Frankfurt found that Armin Meiwes, known as the "cannibal of Rotenburg", killed his victim to satisfy his sexual urges.

But it rejected the prosecution's demand that Meiwes be disqualified for release after 15 years, as is usual for prisoners serving life sentences in Germany. This means he could, potentially, be freed in 2021.

Meiwes, 44, immediately indicated that he would appeal, signalling another round in a long legal process that has laid bare a hitherto secret market in cannibalism.

The Frankfurt trial was the second time Meiwes has been tried for killing Bernd Juergen Brandes in Rotenburg, Meiwes' home town, in western Germany in March 2001.

He was originally convicted of manslaughter and sentenced to 8½ years in prison in 2004.

But on appeal, a federal judge dismissed the sentence as too lenient and ordered a retrial on the higher charge of murder.

Meiwes, a computer technician, has insisted throughout both trials that his victim had a death wish and had begged to be killed and eaten, saying it was the "ultimate kick" that both of them were seeking.

"He had wanted everything just the way it eventually happened," he said last week.

He met Brandes after advertising on the internet for a "slaughter victim" and invited him to his farm house.

Brandes, who had written a will, bought a one-way rail ticket, while Meiwes set up a beer-tent table in his house to serve as a butcher's block.

When the two men met, they made a videotape of their fatal encounter. It showed them having sex, then Meiwes severing Brandes' penis, which the two men then fried and tried to eat.

Meiwes later stabbed his bleeding, unconscious victim in the throat and cut away other parts of his body.

He admitted he eventually ate about 20 kilograms of Brandes's flesh, accompanied by potatoes and a pepper or wine sauce, served on "good crockery".

His lawyers argued that he was not guilty of murder but rather of the crime of "killing on demand", which carries a maximum prison sentence of five years.

Psychologists told the court Meiwes was a deeply disturbed and lonely man but mentally fit to stand trial.

Meiwes testified that his fantasies about eating flesh dated back some 30 years. He said that after his father abandoned his family, he realised that he wanted to eat a school friend as a way of keeping somebody with him forever.

He has admitted recently that, even in his prison cell, he still fantasises about killing people when he sees attractive young bodies on television or in magazines.

Prosecutors said this was an indication that there was a high risk he would try to kill and eat somebody again.

Meiwes was arrested months after killing Brandes when an Austrian student noticed another internet advertisement and alerted police.

Investigators found that he had been in touch with more than 200 people who shared his fantasies, while Meiwes himself said there were about 800 cannibals in Germany who hoped to fulfil their urges.

He has urged them to seek psychological help.

His story inspired a US-made horror film called Butterfly, A Grimm Love Story, but Meiwes succeeded in blocking its release on the grounds that it was an infringement of his privacy.

AFP