Prosecutor wants murder conviction for cannibal 03/05/2006 00:00

3 May 2006

FRANKFURT - Closing the state's case against German cannibal Armin Meiwes, a prosecutor demanded in Frankfurt Wednesday that the conviction be upgraded from manslaughter to murder.

Meiwes, 44, is being tried a second time after an appeal court ruled that killing and eating a consenting man would be murder if the purpose was sexual gratification. Meiwes has told the court that the victim, a Berlin engineer, had begged to be killed this way.

Prosecutor Marcus Koehler said killing and eating a young man had been Meiwes' dominant sexual fantasy and he had wanted to make this come true and gratify himself later by remembering it.

"He was making a hit film for the movie theatre inside his head," Koehler told the court. In addition, the killing had had the purpose of performing a second offence, desecrating a body. If convicted of murder, Meiwes would face life imprisonment.

Defence lawyers insist the act was manslaughter at the most.

At the first trial, Meiwes received eight and a half years' jail. The bizarre case, which has been turned into a movie, has posed a legal conundrum because Germany has no law against cannibalism as such.

Meiwes has described how he invited the fellow homosexual to his country house in March 2001. A video of the act showed how Meiwes cut off a body part while the dying victim watched. Meiwes said he froze the man's remains and ate the flesh over several weeks.

DPA

Subject: German news