Sadistic mafia bosses tortured and killed a treacherous gang member then turned him into a stew, police believe.
Serbian gangsters beat Milan Jurisic, 37, to death with a hammer, skinned and boned him with a sharp knife then put him through a meat grinder at a flat in Madrid.
They made a macabre face mask from his skin, cooked his flesh and ate him for lunch.
Later they threw the bones into the River Manzanares in the Spanish capital.
Fellow gang member Sretko Kalinic, nicknamed The Butcher, confessed to the crime after being arrested in the Croatian capital Zagreb last year.
Spanish officers this week found 50 bones in the river and located the house of horrors where the bloodbath was carried out.
Jurisic is thought to have betrayed his fellow gang members by stealing money from them.
He was on the run after being convicted in his absence of assassinating Serbian prime minister Zoran Djindjic in 2003.
Spanish police believe the cannibal gang who killed him were led by Luka Bojovic, arrested in Valencia last month also accused of assassinating Djindjic.
Inside Bojovic’s apartment in Valencia they found documents backing up Kalinic’s shocking account of the killing.
All of those involved in the gruesome Madrid murder are said to be members of the Zemun Clan, a mafia group from Belgrade.
The crime, thought to have been committed in 2009, is being investigated by magistrate Fernando Andreu at the National Court in Madrid.
