- (AFP) -- A German self-confessed cannibal was sentenced
to eight-and-a-half years in prison for manslaughter for killing and eating
a man he claims was a willing victim.
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- The court in the central city of Kassel rejected state
prosecutors' call for a conviction on murder charges and a 15-year sentence
for defendant Armin Meiwes.
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- Meiwes, who sat impassively as the verdict was read out,
had admitted slaying, carving up and eating a man he met over the Internet
after sex and hours of sado-masochism, but insisted it was all consensual.
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- Presiding judge Volker Muetze told the packed courtroom
that Meiwes, 42, had not committed a murder in the legal sense "but
a behavior that is condemned in our society -- namely the killing and butchering
of a human being".
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- "They were two deeply psychologically disturbed
people who both wanted something from the other," he said Friday.
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- Among the evidence examined by the court was hours of
video footage taken of the events of March 10, 2001.
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- As well as gripping the country with the power of its
graphic detail, the case also turned an uncomfortable spotlight on a hitherto
secret world of cannibalism and extreme fetishism.
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- Investigators found Meiwes had been in Internet contact
with more than 200 people who shared his fantasies, and he claimed in court
there were thousands more like him.
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- At least five other people also saying they were willing
to be killed and eaten went to his house in Rotenburg, near Kassel, but
either backed down or were rejected as unappealing.
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- The computer technician was accused of murder for sexual
satisfaction, with prosecutors saying that although victim Bernd Juergen
Brandes seemed willing, Meiwes exploited the latter's disturbed state of
mind to satisfy his own lust.
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- Meiwes was also accused of disturbing the peace of the
dead for carving up the corpse. Cannibalism itself is technically not a
crime in Germany.
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