A FORMER taxi firm boss, who murdered his business partner and a female driver because he was jealous they were having an affair, has failed to convince the country's top judge that his minimum 25-year jail term violates his human rights.

Michael Attwooll, 66, formerly of Channel View, Risca, along with accomplice John Roden, killed Gerard Stevens and his girlfriend Christine Rees using a rifle and a machete, at the taxi firm offices in Risca as long ago as May 6, 1994.

Attwooll and Roden were convicted of the double murder at Newport Crown Court in June 1995, and received life sentences.

Minimum terms were set on the life terms by Michael Howard, the then Home Secretary, of 25 years in the case of Attwooll, and 21 years for Roden.

Under changes to the law brought about by the Criminal Justice Act in 2003, those tariffs were reviewed, and left undisturbed, by Mr Justice Flaux, sitting at London's High Court on March 31 this year.

Jonathan Bennathan QC defending Attwooll, argued in the Criminal Appeal Court today, that Mr Justice Flaux's decision had been flawed.

Mr Bennathan claimed that the current system - where judges review tariff decisions made prior to the changes in the law - violates the European Convention on Human Rights, as it uses the decision of a politician as a component of what should be a purely legal decision.

Lord Judge dismissed the appeal: "This was on any view a terrible murder of the utmost gravity.

"Weight has been attached in setting this tariff to the fact that the two men had carefully planned the murder over a number of weeks, that there were two murders and the brutality of those murders."