Bavaria: prison sentence for brutal rat torturer

Weiden (dpa/lby) - An animal torturer has to be imprisoned for two years and nine months because he sadistically killed more than 20 rats and birds and made cell phone videos of his actions.

Bavaria: prison sentence for brutal rat torturer

Weiden (dpa/lby) - An animal torturer has to be imprisoned for two years and nine months because he sadistically killed more than 20 rats and birds and made cell phone videos of his actions. The man was in court for the third time in Weiden in the Upper Palatinate on Wednesday. After the 32-year-old and the public prosecutor's office withdrew their appeal, the first-instance judgment of the district court for violating the Animal Welfare Act is now final, as a spokesman said.

The sentence took into account that the man had a criminal record and that both the execution and the attitude of the man - who was amused by the torture of the animals - were particularly cruel, the spokesman said.

The man gradually bought the animals in a pet shop in spring 2020. He fried a rat alive in the pan and commented with "Crispy steak, it couldn't be fresher". He doused one rat with lighter fluid and set it on fire, and cut off the paws of another. At the time, he sent the film sequences to a friend. So she went to the police.