Luka Magnotta. Photo: Reuters

A Canadian man who killed and dismembered a Chinese student in Montreal in 2012 was found guilty of first-degree murder yesterday, after more than a week of jury deliberation on the gruesome case.

Luka Magnotta, 32, admitted to killing and dismembering engineering student Jun Lin, 33, but pleaded not guilty on grounds of mental illness.

Magnotta was also found guilty of committing an indignity to a human body, publishing and mailing obscene material, and criminally harassing Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper and others.

The prosecution had argued that Magnotta was “a man on a mission” and had carefully planned his acts. The verdict came on the eighth day of jury deliberations.

Magnotta, standing in a glassed-in, high-security prisoner’s dock, showed no emotion and only lowered his eyes as the verdicts were read out. A first-degree murder conviction in Canada carries an automatic life sentence with no possibility of parole for 25 years.

The presiding judge, Justice Guy Cournoyer, told the court the case “was by all standards unique” and told the jury: “We have asked a lot of you but you rose to the occasion.”

The victim’s father, Diran Lin, travelled from China for the trial. A lawyer read the father’s statement to the court after the verdict.

“The night Lin Jun died, parts of many other people died in one way or another. His mother, his sister and me, his friends ... in one night, we lost a lifetime of hope,” he said.