The European Court of Human Rights has ruled the whole life tariffs given to murderer Jeremy Bamber and two other killers breached their human rights.

The court ruled there had to be both a possibility of release and review to be compatible with their human rights.

However, it said this did not mean there was "any prospect of imminent release".

Bamber was jailed for life in 1986 after being found guilty of the murders of his parents June and Nevill, sister Sheila Caffell and her twin sons, Nicholas and Daniel, six, at White House Farm in Tolleshunt D'Arcy.

Bamber, along with Peter Moore and Douglas Vinter, argued their sentences - with no chance of review - were "inhuman and degrading and this is a violation of Article 3 of the European Convention on Human Rights.

Bamber has always protested his innocence and claims Sheila, a paranoid schizophrenic, shot her family before turning the gun on herself.

UPDATED NOON: Jeremy Bamber said his victory in the European Court of Human Rights is hollow.

Bamber, has been in jailed for nearly 28 years, said: The verdict today seems in so many ways to be hollow as I am still serving a prison sentence for a crime I did not commit.


“My whole life order has now been given a system of reviews but there is no provision for someone who is wrongly convicted to prove they are worthy of release, such hope is, in reality, no hope at all.”

For more on this story, see tomorrow's Gazette and Echo.