German policeman held for death of man he met on cannibal website

'Victim had been fantasizing about being killed and eaten by someone else since his youth,' says Dresden police chief.

BERLIN: A German policeman has been arrested after the chopped-up body of a man he met on a fetishist website for cannibalism was found buried in his garden, police in the eastern city of Dresden said on Friday.

"The victim had been fantasizing about being killed and eaten by someone else since his youth," Dresden police chief Dieter Kroll told a news conference. It was not immediately clear whether any act of cannibalism had taken place.

The investigation recalled the case of Armin Meiwes, dubbed the "Cannibal of Rothenburg", who killed and ate a man who had advertised on the Internet for someone to kill him "and leave no trace". Meiwes, who filmed the act, received a life sentence in 2006.

Dresden police said the suspect was a 55-year-old who worked as a technical expert in the criminal investigation department. The victim was identified only as a 59-year-old man from Hanover and the case was being treated as murder, they said.