Cannibal: It was manslaughter
2004-01-30 11:13
Kassel - A German self-confessed cannibal was sentenced to eight and a half years in prison for manslaughter on Friday for killing and eating a man he claims was a willing victim.
A Kassel court spared Armin Meiwes a murder conviction by ruling that he had no "base motives" in the crime.
Prosecutors called Meiwes, a 42-year-old computer expert who met his victim online, a "human butcher" who acted simply to "satisfy a sexual impulse" and had sought a life sentence for murder.
His defence argued that since the victim had volunteered to be killed and eaten, the crime should be classified a mercy killing, which carries a five-year maximum penalty.
When his trial opened on December 3 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.
Brandes travelled from Berlin in reply to an internet advertisement seeking a young man for "slaughter and consumption". Meiwes testified that Brandes wanted to be stabbed to death after drinking a bottle of cold medicine to lose consciousness.
"Bernd came to me of his own free will to end his life," Meiwes said in his closing statement in court Monday. "For him, it was a nice death."
Still, he said he regretted the killing.
"I had my big kick and I don't need to do it again," he said. "I regret it all very much, but I can't undo it."
- AFP