The British government’s chief law officer has decided not to challenge the sentences handed down to two brothers who sadistically tortured two young boys.
Last month the attackers, now aged 11 and 12, were sentenced to indefinite detention with a minimum term of five years for the brutal assault in Edlington, near Doncaster, South Yorkshire.
The attorney general, Baroness Scotland, was urged to refer the sentences to the Court of Appeal.
But in a statement she said: “The judge was clearly correct to impose indeterminate sentences of detention and I agree with his analysis and with the minimum terms he set.”
The victims, aged nine and 11, suffered a 90-minute ordeal during which they were burnt with cigarettes and cut with knives.
The brothers, who cannot be named on the orders of Mr Justice Keith, were sentenced last month in Sheffield after the trial case, during which Doncaster social services were forced to issue an apology for their failings.
Police who found the victims last April on wasteland in Edlington where they had been lured, were in tears, many describing it as the single worst moment of their careers.
During the prolonged assault, the brothers, who were aged 10 and 11 at the time, hit their victims with sticks and bricks, made them perform sexual acts upon each other, burnt them with cigarettes, stamped on their faces, put a noose around one and told both they were going to die.
One of the victims, who was found later covered in blood and on the brink of death, had a kitchen sink dropped on to his head, while the other was stabbed so badly that the knife penetrated to the bone.
It has emerged that the brothers had attempted to carry out a similar attack the week before, when they enticed a 12-year-old to the same spot on the pretext of showing him a toad, only to be interrupted by a passing fisherman.