A self-confessed German cannibal on Tuesday said at his retrial for murder that five years after butchering and eating an apparently willing victim he felt no guilt.
Armin Meiwes (44) told the court in Frankfurt that cannibalism was against the codes of social conduct but not a crime because his victim, an engineer from Berlin, had wanted to die in this way.
“Without consent it would be murder, that is clear,” he said after taking the stand for a second day in a trial that has gripped and appalled Germany.
Meiwes is facing murder charges after a federal judge dismissed the original January 2004 verdict of manslaughter and an eight-and-a-half-year prison sentence as too lenient.
The accused on Monday testified in detail about finding 43-year-old Bernd Juergen Brandes on the internet by entering the words “slaughter victim” in a search engine, and about the latter’s “death wish”.
Meiwes said Brandes had repeatedly urged him to kill him, even before they met in person.
When they did in March 2001 in Meiwes’s hometown of Rotenburg, the two men had sex before the cannibal cut off Brandes’ penis.
They fried it and tried to eat it, and later Meiwes hung Brandes from a hook in his kitchen and stabbed him in the neck before carving up his body and eventually eating about two-thirds of it.
On Monday, Meiwes insisted that he believed his victim died slowly of blood loss before he stabbed him, and said he only realised later when watching a video he made of them that he was still breathing faintly.
“These scenes are terrible for me as well,” he said, adding that he had prayed for forgiveness for both his victim and himself and kissed him on the mouth just before stabbing him.
“I felt hate, anger and happiness at the same time,” he added.
The court has to determine whether Meiwes committed murder, despite the victim’s purported desire to die.
His lawyers are arguing that he did not, saying the case was one of “killing on demand” which carries a maximum sentence of five years in prison in Germany. – AFP