A German court has convicted self-confessed cannibal Armin Meiwes of manslaughter and sentenced him to eight years and six months in prison.
Meiwes, 42, admitted killing and eating Bernd Juergen Brandes after sex and hours of sado-masochism but insisted his victim had volunteered.
It has been Germany's most sensational trial for decades.
The verdict falls well short of the prosecution's demand for a 15-year sentence for sexual murder.
The defence had sought a verdict of illegal euthanasia, carrying a far shorter sentence of six months to five years, on the grounds that it had been a "killing on request".
But while rejecting the defence's argument, the court also ruled that Meiwes had had no "base motives" for the crime and settled on a manslaughter verdict, as Judge Volker Muetze told the packed courtroom.
Meiwes had not, he said, committed a murder in the legal sense "but a behaviour which is condemned in our society - namely the killing and butchering of a human being".
"Seen legally, this is manslaughter, killing a person without being a murderer," he said.
The judge described the killer and his victim as "two deeply psychologically disturbed people who both wanted something from the other".
The case could make legal history in a country which has no laws against cannibalism. |