Self-confessed
German cannibal convicted
May 09 8:22 AM US/Eastern
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By INGE TREICHEL
Associated Press Writer
FRANKFURT, Germany
A man who admitted killing an acquaintance he met on the Internet was
convicted of murder and sentenced to life in prison Tuesday, following
his retrial in a case that engrossed and appalled Germany.
Armin Meiwes, a 44-year-old computer technician, also was convicted of
disturbing the peace of the dead. His lawyers had argued that the
Frankfurt state court should instead convict him of the lesser offense
of "killing on demand," on the grounds that he was only following his
victim's wishes.
The retrial of Meiwes opened in January. It was held after a federal
appeals court overturned his initial manslaughter conviction to allow
prosecutors to seek a tougher sentence.
At the retrial, Meiwes renewed a detailed confession, telling the court
his version of the grisly details of the March 2001 killing of Bernd
Juergen Brandes at Meiwes' home in the central town of Rotenburg.
Meiwes said Brandes _ who had traveled 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. He testified
that Brandes, 43, had wanted to "be eaten alive."
"Otherwise, I would never have done it," Meiwes, who captured the
killing on video, told the court during the trial.
Meiwes also maintained that Brandes had urged him to carry out further
killings after his death.
Still, the defendant claimed he had hesitated before going through with
the act.
"I wanted to eat him _ I didn't want to kill him," he told the court.
Police tracked down and arrested Meiwes in December 2002 after a
student in Austria alerted them to a message Meiwes had posted on the
Internet seeking a man willing to be killed and eaten.
In early 2004, a court in the city of Kassel convicted Meiwes of
manslaughter and sentenced him to 8 1/2 years in prison, but
prosecutors appealed the verdict.
Federal judges overturned the original ruling last year and ordered a
retrial, arguing the lower court, in rejecting murder charges, failed
to give sufficient consideration to the sexual motive behind the
killing.