German cannibal: It was like taking communion

The killing took place in March 2001. Meiwes was arrested in December 2002 after police received a tip-off from someone who had seen one of his internet adverts seeking a slaughter victim.

The trial is expected to last until January end and some 40 witnesses will be called, including some of Meiwes’s contacts. He told how he made contact with a 43-year-old computer specialist identified only as Bernd-Juergen B. He invited him to his home and killed him with a kitchen knife in a ‘‘slaughtering room’’ he had built containing meat hooks, a cage and a butcher’s table.

‘‘He told me he had had the desire since he was a child to be slaughtered and eaten,’’ Meiwes said. (Reuters)