FRANKFURT, Germany -- A cannibal whose killing and eating of a willing victim shocked Germany has been convicted of murder and sentenced to life in prison after a court overturned a previous manslaughter conviction.
Judge Klaus Drescher threw out the defense team's argument that Armin Meiwes, 44, should be convicted only of the lesser offense of "killing on demand," because he was only following his victim's wishes.
Announcing the verdict at the Frankfurt state court on Tuesday, Drescher said the killing was "a particularly perverse murder."
"He acted out of self-seeking motives and has shown that, to this day, he does not regret his actions," Drescher said, according to The Associated Press. Meiwes watched calmly as the verdict was read out.
Meiwes, a former computer technician from Rotenburg-an-der-fuld in central Germany, had corresponded with 400 people over the Internet to find a willing victim.
Bernd-Juergen Brandes, a high-ranking IT manager with German firm Siemens, agreed and traveled by train to meet Meiwes.
The defense showed a videotape of the March 2001 incident, in which the victim made no attempt to escape and was a willing participant.
Meiwes cut off the victim's penis before the pair ate it together, authorities have said. He then cut up the victim, stored his body in a freezer and ate it over the following months.
"The next one must be young but not so fat," Drescher quoted Meiwes as saying after the killing.
Meiwes was arrested in December 2002 after a student in Austria showed police an advertisement Meiwes had placed on the Internet, seeking another man willing to be killed and eaten.
The judge described Meiwes as psychologically sick but aware of what he was doing. "The defendant was fully conscious of his actions and could control them," Drescher told the court on Tuesday.
"This is not killing on request," he said. "He killed him because he wanted to slaughter and eat his flesh. He had achieved the biggest kick of his life."
A court-appointed psychiatric expert, Georg Stolpmann, told the trial he believed there was a high risk that Meiwes could offend again.
The defendant had claimed he had hesitated before going through with the act. "I wanted to eat him -- I didn't want to kill him," he told the court.
Meiwes was standing trial for the second time after Germany's top criminal court ruled his 2004 conviction for manslaughter and eight-year jail sentence was too lenient.
Under German law Meiwes could be freed after 15 years. The court rejected a request by prosecutors to deny his right to early release, saying his victim had volunteered to be killed and eaten. Meiwes was also convicted of disturbing the peace of the dead.
It is not known if Meiwes will appeal Tuesday's ruling.
