BERLIN (Reuters) – A Canadian man suspected of murdering and dismembering a Chinese student, then posting a video of the grisly crime online, was arrested in an Internet cafe in Berlin yesterday after an international manhunt.
Interpol had issued a “red notice,” its highest type of warning, for Luka Rocco Magnotta, 29, who faces first degree murder charges in the death of 32-year-old Jun Lin.
Magnotta, who used at least three identities and was an avid Internet user, is believed to have killed Lin with a pick axe, dismembered and defiled his body and then mailed some of the body parts to political parties in the Canadian capital Ottawa.
The gruesome murder prompted the largest manhunt in the history of Montreal, a city of 1.7 million in the predominantly French-speaking province of Quebec.
“He used the web to glorify himself, and it was the web that got him arrested,” Montreal police spokesman Ian Lafreiniere told reporters in the Canadian city where the murder took place.
“There was great relief among investigators when we heard this news,” Lafreiniere said of the arrest.
German police picked up the trail after a tip-off from French authorities, who realized Magnotta – dubbed by European media as the “Canadian psycho” – had caught a bus to Berlin from France.
“He should have known that there are identity checks when you travel by coach,” a French police source said.
The owner of the Berlin Internet cafe, Kadir Anlayisli, said he recognized Magnotta and stepped out of the cafe, on Berlin’s busy Karl Marx Strasse in the multi-cultural neighborhood of Neukoelln, stopped a passing police van and told them, “I have someone here you might be looking for.”
“Our policemen went inside and asked the person for his identification. He gave them a false name but he got very nervous so they insisted on seeing his passport. After a while he gave up and said ‘You’ve got me,’“ said Berlin police spokesman Stefan Redlich.
Most of the police in the van were young trainees, Redlich said.
