Magnotta chair was being auctioned on eBay

The Berlin internet café where suspected murderer Luka Rocco Magnotta was arrested last week tried to auction off the chair he was purportedly sitting in on eBay.

The auction began Friday night and had garnered 36 bids, the highest for 1,111 euros, before eBay shut it down Sunday.

"Magnotta was sitting in the chair calmly and unsuspecting, reading articles about himself on the web. A little later, the [alleged] murderer and cannibal was arrested thanks to the courageous behaviour of K.A.," the German-language eBay page for the auction said before it was pulled.

"I offer what is, outwardly, an admittedly rather unimpressive office chair, but one that is guaranteed to be an unbeatable 'conversation piece' in your home."

K.A. are the initials of Kadir Anlayisli, the employee at the Helin Internet-Café who recognized Magnotta from news reports and alerted a passing police patrol. Seven police officers then entered the cybercafé and arrested him without incident at about 2 p.m. local time on June 4.

The Berlin tabloid BZ, which first reported on the auction, said a friend of the café's owner posted the chair on eBay.

"She said a friend came up with the idea and they wanted to get money to donate it to the family of the victim of Magnotta. But there is no proof that they really wanted to do that," Andrea Hoemke, a journalist with BZ, told As It Happens host Carol Off in an interview. "They don't seem like bad people, but it's weird that they did it."

Magnotta is suspected of killing 33-year-old Concordia University engineering student Jun Lin last month, recording video of the attack, and mailing Lin's severed body parts to federal political parties in Ottawa and, possibly, two schools in B.C. He is being held in a German jail pending Canada's request to have him extradited.