Long jail terms for students' murderers

Two British men were handed jail sentences totalling 75 years yesterday for the torture and murder of two French students during what prosecutors described as an "orgy of bloodletting" in the students' London flat.

Dano Sonnex, 23, and Nigel Farmer, 33, tied up postgraduate students Laurent Bonomo and Gabriel Ferez, stabbed them a total of 244 times before setting light to their flat during a botched burglary last June. Judge John Saunders said it was the worst crime he had ever dealt with and jailed Mr Sonnex for a minimum of 40 years and Mr Farmer for at least 35 years.

"The facts of this case are truly horrific," the judge told London's Old Bailey court, "The killers got pleasure from what they were doing."

Mr Sonnex winked at his father in the court's public gallery and pretended to whistle as he was led from the dock. Mr Sonnex, who had been jailed for a previous knife attack and armed robbery, had been mistakenly let out of jail early despite taking drugs and setting fire to his cell.

Even when the error was spotted it was two weeks before police took Mr Sonnex into custody. By then the students were dead. Britain's Justice Secretary Jack Straw apologised to the victims' families for the mistakes and David Scott, head of the probation service in London, has resigned.

Outside court, Françoise Villemont, the mother of Gabriel Ferez, said: "Nothing will remove the suffering and I can never accept the torture that was gratuitously inflicted on Gabriel."

Guy Bonomo, father of Laurent Bonomo, said his son's murderers were not human beings but animals, adding: "I think those people should never be released."

Describing it as an "orgy of bloodletting", prosecutor Crispin Aylett said: "What took place in this case involved gratuitous violence of the most extreme form imaginable."

The court heard how Mr Sonnex and Mr Farmer burst into Mr Bonomo's rented flat in south London in the early hours and tied up the 23-year-old biochemistry students. They stole games consoles, phones and bank cards which they used to withdraw £360. Fuelled by drink and drugs, the robbers egged each other on to an "inhuman attack of brutal and sustained ferocity", prosecutor Aylett told the jury.

Mr Farmer, a drug addict, set fire to the bedsit, leaving their victims bound at the ankles and wrists and their heads wrapped in towels. Mr Bonomo's bed was saturated with blood.