Racially motivated killers in the North could be jailed for at least 30 years under tough British Government proposals announced today.
Amid a new warning that victims could die unless an alarming level of attacks is halted in Belfast, it has emerged that racial bigots who murder may be ordered to serve heavy fixed sentences.
Police and sex attack killings have also been included among the top categories, as part of moves to follow laws introduced in England and Wales.
Judges would be stripped of powers to set jail terms for all mandatory life prisoners, if the measures announced by British Criminal Justice Minister Mr John Spellar are brought in.
Proposals in a consultation paper set out four separate minimum terms: whole life, 30 years, 15 years and 12 years for a juvenile. Multiple killers aged over 21 who target children or carry out a sadistic, premeditated murder would never be released under the terms of the Criminal Justice Act already operating in Britain.
In the next tariff anyone who kills a police or prison officer in the course of duty would be kept behind bars for at least 30 years.
But the document also confirms that sentence applies to "a murder that is racially or religiously aggravated or aggravated by sexual orientation".
The proposals were announced just hours after a heavily-pregnant Pakistani woman and her brother-in-law were targeted by racist attackers in south Belfast.
PA