SERIAL killer Anthony Hardy – the so-called “Camden Ripper” – has been told his “life means life” prison sentence does not breach his human rights and that he is unlikely to ever be released.

The punishment of being jailed without the possibility of parole has been handed to 49 prisoners in the United Kingdom, but was challenged in the European courts with a claim that it was inhumane to lock someone up without any chance of release at all.

It what was seen as a test case, Alfred Hutchinson, who was given a whole life tariff for murdering a couple and their son in Sheffield 30 years ago, had challenged the sentences in the grand chamber of the European Court of Human Rights.

But judges there said on Thursday that the British government was not breaking the rules in applying the prison terms to killers, because there was always the option of the justice secretary of the day making a special decision to release them.

Prisoners can also be released on compassionate grounds.

The result was being keenly watched by other murderers who have been told they will not be considered for parole due to the circumstances of their case. These include Hardy, 63, who killed three women at his council flat in Camden Town over Christmas in 2002. The bodies of two of his victims, Liz Valada and Brigitte Maclennan, were sawn up and thrown away in black bin bags, after the corpses had been set-up by Hardy in demonic masks for photographs. Their heads and hands were never found. Hardy later confessed to killing Sally White in his flat on the College Place Estate a year earlier. He was jailed for life in November 2003.

Also sentenced to a whole life tariff is Thomas McDowell, who murdered trainee rabbi Andreas Hinz in July 2002. They had met in a Camden Town bar but when they went back to McDowell’s flat nearby, Mr Hinz was killed and his body was also chopped up and thrown out in rubbish bags.

The European court judgment said “whole life orders were open to review under national law”, clearing the UK of what Mr Hutchinson’s legal team had described as “degrading” punishments.