'Murdered for sexual pleasure'
2006-01-12 12:15
Frankfurt - A self-confessed cannibal returned to court in Germany on Thursday as prosecutors sought a murder conviction for the man who killed and ate an apparently willing victim he met on the internet.
In a lurid case that shocked the country, Armin Meiwes is being retried after a federal judge threw out a January 2004 manslaughter conviction on the grounds it was too lenient, despite the victim's purported "death wish".
Meiwes, wearing a dark suit and a black dress shirt, was led into the courtroom in the western city of Frankfurt wearing handcuffs and carrying a thick binder.
He greeted his three-member legal team with a broad smile and handshakes, then listened impassively as state prosecutor Marcus Koehler made his opening statement.
"The defendant stands accused of murder for sexual gratification," Koehler told the three-judge panel before describing the events of a night in March 2001.
The dead man, 43-year-old Berlin engineer Bernd Juergen Brandes, met Meiwes after replying to an internet advertisement for "young, well-built men aged 18 to 30 for slaughter". He was one of more than 200 volunteers.
Brandes, who had a will, bought a one-way rail ticket to Meiwes's idyllic hometown of Rotenburg, where his host picked him up at the station and took him to his rambling half-timbered farmhouse.
The two men had sex and after Brandes downed sleeping pills and whiskey, Meiwes cut off the man's penis, which they planned to eat together but found it was inedible "even when fried".
After a while, Brandes became unconscious.
"Driven by sexual lust, he laid him on a bench to be slaughtered," said Koehler.
Meiwes, now 44, stabbed Brandes and hung his body from a hook on the ceiling of his kitchen.
He dissected the corpse, slicing off 30kg of the flesh which he stored in a freezer. He later ate two-thirds of it, often with accompaniments such as pepper sauce or a wine sauce and potatoes.
The case did not come to light until an Austrian student spotted another internet advertisement by Meiwes seeking new victims and alerted the police.
Meiwes, a computer service technician, was sentenced to eight-and-a-half years in prison.
State prosecutors have argued that it is crucial the German justice system ensure that a "highly dangerous defendant" is not eligible for release as early as 2008 and hand down a life sentence.
A verdict is expected in March.