Court rethinks cannibal sentence

Meiwes may walk free by 2008

German cannibal Armin Meiwes is back in court where an appeal is being heard almost 15 months after he was imprisoned for eight and a half years.

Prosecutors are pressing for him to be jailed for life, while his defence wants the sentence cut to five years.

Meiwes was jailed for manslaughter in January 2004 for killing and eating a willing victim he met via the internet.

The judge denied the prosecutors' call for a murder conviction, which would have meant a 15-year jail sentence.

Both the prosecution and the defence appealed against the manslaughter verdict.

His defence team say because the victim was a volunteer, his death was a mercy killing, carrying a penalty of five years in jail

But prosecutors call Meiwes a butcher who must be imprisioned for life.

Meiwes, a middle-aged computer technician, killed and ate Bernd Juergen Brandes after posting an advert on the internet asking for a willing victim in 2001.

The case still shocks and fascinates Germans.

It has been the subject of a song and a film script, and a documentary is in the works.