Cannibal gives grisly details

2006-01-16 14:26

Frankfurt - A man who has admitted being a cannibal repeated a detailed confession on Monday during a retrial triggered by prosecutors seeking a tougher sentence.

Armin Meiwes, 44, told the court the grisly details of how he killed 43-year-old Bernd Juergen Brandes at his home in the town of Rotenburg in March 2001 and later consumed the man's body.

Meiwes could face life in prison if convicted of murder by the state court in Frankfurt, which is retrying the case. The trial is scheduled to continue until early March.

The computer technician was convicted of manslaughter in early 2004, and was sentenced to eight and a half years in prison, but prosecutors appealed the sentence as not enough.

Federal judges overturned the original ruling last year and ordered a retrial, arguing the lower court failed to give sufficient consideration to the sexual motive behind the killing.

Meiwes said Brandes - who had travelled from Berlin after answering his internet posting under the pseudonym "Franky" seeking a young man for "slaughter and consumption" - wanted to be stabbed to death after drinking a bottle of cold medicine to lose consciousness.

Meiwes captured the killing on video, which was shown during the first trial, held in the town of Kassel.

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.

- AP