By Philip Blenkinsop
Thu Jan 12, 2006 11:27 AM GMT

FRANKFURT (Reuters) - A German cannibal was led handcuffed into court on Thursday for a retrial to determine whether killing a man who wanted to be eaten amounts to murder.

Photographers' flashbulbs greeted the arrival in a packed Frankfurt court of Armin Meiwes, a computer repairman who had cut up and consumed a man he had met via the Internet.

Meiwes was first sentenced in January 2004 to 8-1/2 years for manslaughter, but the Supreme Court ruled last April that the verdict was too lenient and ordered a retrial.

The bizarre case of sexual fetishism and gory details of the crime have transfixed the public in Germany and beyond, while legal experts have puzzled over when a killing can be called murder if the victim wanted to die.

Prosecutor Marcus Koehler read out the indictment as 44-year-old Meiwes, in a suit, charcoal grey shirt and striped tie but by now out of handcuffs, sat back and listened.

Meiwes has admitted killing Berlin-based computer specialist Bernd-Juergen Brandes, 42, but had initially been spared a murder conviction and a possible life sentence because the victim had asked to be eaten.

Prosecutors argued that he should have been found guilty of murder as he had killed to satisfy perverted desires.

Defence counsel Harald Ermel has argued that Meiwes's sole motive was to meet the wishes of his victim and that his crime was only "killing on request", a form of illegal euthanasia that carries a maximum five-year sentence.

Reuters

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Russell Wilcox is a retired college professor who spends several months in Florida and several months in Rhode Island each year, and whose interests include boating and sailing, political activism, ballroom dancing and bridge. He has an MBA from Harvard, a Computer Systems CAGS from Bryant and a BS from Northeastern. He has worked in industry for EG&G and Texas Instruments, operated his own business with more than 200 employees, and served as Director of the Computer Information Systems Program for Stonehill College. He is a published author of two technical studies, and is the proud father of four children and the proud grandfather of six grandchildren. A holder of two patents in microchip connections and a true product of the melting pot, his father is the son of a Yankee farmer, and his mother the second generation daughter of Italian immigrants who retained their culture, but strove mightily to become Americans, sending four sons to fight against Hitler and Mussolini.