Cannibal Should Get Life - Prosecutor

January 27, 2004

The German cannibal who confessed to killing a man he met over the Internet and eating his flesh should spend life behind bars for murder, prosecutors said today as they made closing arguments at his trial.

Prosecutor Marcus Koehler said Armin Meiwes, 42, acted simply to „satisfy a sexual impulse‰ and filmed himself dismembering the victim before he ate him so he could „admire himself as a human butcher.‰

Meiwes, Koehler said, considered eating his victim as a kind of twisted „communion.‰

Defence lawyer Harald Ermel argued that the death was ‰homicide on demand‰ &Mac246; a form of mercy killing &Mac246; because the victim had given his consent to be killed and eaten. That would carry a maximum five year prison sentence.

When his trial opened in the central city of Kassel last month, Meiwes confessed in detail to the killing of 43-year-old Bernd Juergen Brandes at his home in the nearby town of Rotenburg.

Brandes, who had travelled from Berlin after answering Meiwes&Mac226; Internet postings, wanted to be stabbed to death after drinking a bottle of cold medicine to lose consciousness, Meiwes testified.

A grisly video he made of the act was shown to the court in a closed session during the trial. 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.

Several experts have testified that Meiwes was fit to stand trial and was not mentally ill.

Police tracked down and arrested Meiwes 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.

A verdict in the trial is expected on Friday.

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