A GERMAN MAN suspected of killing another man for sexual gratification and eating pieces of the victim’s body has gone on trial in Berlin.

The 41-year-old teacher is accused of meeting a 43-year-old mechanic on an online dating site a few hours before the killing. Neither of their names were released for privacy reasons.

Prosecutors said there was no indication that the victim agreed to be killed.

After the killing last September, the accused allegedly chopped up the man’s body in his apartment in the Berlin-Pankow neighbourhood and then spread parts of it around different areas of the city.

Police were looking for the missing man for weeks before bones were found in a forest in northern Berlin and the accused was tracked down with the help of sniffer dogs.

The trial at a Berlin state court is expected to last until mid-October.

In 2006, a German court convicted Armin Meiwes of murder and disturbing the peace for killing and eating a man he had met online. Meiwes is serving a life sentence.

In 2015, a German police officer was convicted of murder for killing a man he met in an internet chat forum devoted to cannibalism.

Prosecutors said the victim had fantasised about being eaten, but there was no evidence the suspect did so.