Three of Britain's most notorious murderers can be kept behind bars for the rest of their lives, judges at the European Court of Human Rights ruled yesterday.

However, the court on the same day ruled that radical Islamic cleric Abu Qatada cannot be returned to Jordan, where he has been convicted of terror offences on evidence that, he claims, was obtained under torture.

Murderers Jeremy Bamber, Peter Moore and Douglas Vinter had all asked the Strasbourg court to rule on their whole-life sentences.

The murderers said condemning them to die in prison amounts to ‘inhuman or degrading treatment’ under article three, prohibition on torture, of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR).

They further argued that all sentences should be regularly reviewed and that any sentence under which the offender’s rehabilitation cannot lead to a review of his or her release contravenes article five, the right to liberty and security, and article seven, no punishment without law, of the ECHR.

The judges in Strasbourg, however, ruled that the whole life tariff was not ‘grossly disproportionate’ and that in each case London's High Court had ‘decided that an all-life tariff was required, relatively recently and following a fair and detailed consideration’.

Bamber was jailed for shooting dead five members of his family. Moore was convicted of murdering four gay men for his sexual gratification and Vinter killed both his wife and a work colleague.

In a separate case, the judges ruled that Abu Qatada cannot be sent back to Jordan while ‘there remains a real risk that evidence obtained by torture will be used against him’. It is the first time that the Strasbourg-based court has found that an expulsion would be in violation of article 6, the right to a fair trial.