Cannibal trial hard to digest

2004-01-29 07:19

Kassel, Germany - A German cannibal who ate a man he claims was a willing victim faces a possible life sentence for murder Friday after a trial that has laid bare a macabre tale of sex, slaying and sacrifice.

The judges will announce their verdict on a case that has broken new legal ground, gripped Germany in fascinated revulsion and had investigators puzzled at the scale of an apparent underground market in cannibalism.

To outward appearances, Armin Meiwes was a friendly, unassuming man with a steady job who wanted to start a family after a lonely childhood and several failed relationships.

Eating his schoolfriends

Deep down, the 42-year-old was indulging a fetish for cannibalism that had been spiralling out of control since the days he would fantasise about eating his schoolfriends.

Psychologists and sexologists have depicted him as a mentally sane man who seized the opportunity to turn into reality a taboo in civilised society.

"He realised his dream," one psychiatrist told the court in Kassel, central Germany.

Meiwes succumbed to "an obsession for human flesh," his lawyer Harald Ermel said. He "knew he had someone in front of him who wanted to die."

To state prosecutor Marcus Koehler, in contrast, Meiwes was "driven by the lowest possible motives" when he killed and carved up Bernd Juergen Brandes on March 10, 2001.

Throughout the case Meiwes has appeared unruffled. He has frequently asked questions. Photographs in court show him grinning, exposing two fine rows of teeth.

Steaks with sauce

Meiwes admits killing Brandes, 43, an engineer who psychiatrists said had a guilt complex, carving up the corpse, eating 20kg of his flesh - he cut it into steaks and made a sauce to go with it - storing more in his freezer and burying the rest in his garden at Rotenburg, near Kassel.

Brandes, whom he met after appealing on the Internet for a willing victim, apparently wanted to die like this. They first had sex, then cut off Brandes's penis and fried it for eating.

Not a crime

Cannibalism is not a crime in Germany, but prosecutors say Meiwes committed murder for sexual satisfaction, punishable by life in prison which in Germany is at least 15 years.

Defence lawyers say he is guilty only of killing on demand, which carries up to five years in jail.

Does the macabre nature of his deeds make him insane?

Killing Brandes was "the fulfillment of a lifetime dream," said sexologist Klaus Beier.

He told the court he believed Meiwes was above all fascinated by the act of cutting up corpses and that killing was "a necessary evil" to achieve it.

The question the judges must decide is whether he was propelled by Brandes's supposed death wish - or by his own lust for human flesh.

- AFP