5:47pm UK, Friday January 30, 2004

The manslaughter conviction handed down to a German cannibal who killed and ate a man who had asked to die will be appealed.

A Kassel court found Armin Meiwes had no "base motives" and sentenced him to eight and a half years prison on the lesser charge of manslaughter.

Cannibal Armin Meiwes

With time off for good behaviour he could be free by mid-2008, having spent more than a year in custody already pending his trial.

Prosecutors have called Meiwes a "human butcher" who acted simply to "satisfy a sexual impulse".

They say he should have been found guilty of murder.

Legal experts said the case could ultimately go to the country's Supreme Court because it had no precedent.

Meiwes had admitted killing and eating engineer Bend-Juergen Brandes, but said his victim had consented to his own gruesome death.

In finding Meiwes guilty of manslaughter, the court said his victim had volunteered and was seeking "the ultimate thrill."

The jury heard how Meiwes met Brandes after advertising on the internet for "young men for real slaughter and consumption".

The pair ate the engineer's penis before Meiwes carved the body into pieces, stored 66 pounds of flesh in a freezer and buried bones and the skull in the garden, the court heard.

Meiwes told the court that he met five other potential victims but did not eat them for various reasons - either they were too fat, too old, backed down or appeared unfriendly.

The court also heard how the 42-year-old computer technician was trying to find a second person to eat after devouring his first victim.

Both sides had argued that Meiwes was mentally fit and a psychiatrist agreed, telling the court that while he may have been perverted he was legally sane.