Peter Sutcliffe, pictured, has hired a legal team to try to secure his release from Broadmoor using human-rights legislation.

The 13-times killer, now 61, argues the Home Office breached his human rights by not fixing a minimum tariff for his sentence.

Harry Smelt, 83, whose wife Olive survived a hammer attack by Sutcliffe in Halifax in 1975, said: "He didn't give the victims many human rights did he?

"I'm too old to be appalled – I just find it irritating.

"I don't think he has much entitlement to the human rights that he has denied other people.

"Olive is severely disabled, wheelchair-bound and dependent on our daughters and other family for getting out and about. It was such a long time ago that we don't really care what happens to Sutcliffe – as long as they don't let him out."

Sutcliffe, from Heaton, Bradford, was jailed in 1981 and told he would serve at least 30 years behind bars.

But his lawyer, Saimo Chahal, has said she believes the tariff was never formalised.

Sutcliffe is serving 20 life sentences for murdering 13 women, including Josephine Whitaker in Halifax in 1979, and trying to kill another seven.

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