THE serial killer Dennis Nilsen accused the Home Secretary and the prison authorities yeserday of unlawfully preventing him from working on and publishing his autobiography.

Alison Foster, Nilsen’s lawyer, accused David Blunkett and the governor of Full Sutton Prison, near York, of breaching his human rights by refusing to return a copy of the partially completed work. She said the case raised an issue of general importance for other prisoners in a similar position.

Nilsen, 57, admitted killing and butchering 15 young men, most of them homeless homosexuals, at his North London home.

The former policeman was jailed for life in 1983, with a recommendation that he serve a minimum of 25 years, on six counts of murder and two of attempted murder. He was later made the subject of a “whole life” tariff.

Ms Foster told Mr Justice Maurice Kay, sitting in London, that last October the prison authorities had refused to hand the manuscript back, saying its contents were “not within the scope of materials a prisoner may lawfully publish”.

Several copies were in the hands of friends, and one was believed to be in the possession of a Sunday newspaper.

Ms Foster argued that Nilsen’s rights to freedom of expression under Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights were being breached.

She told the judge: “The prison authorities accept they have interfered with Mr Nilsen’s Article 10 rights to expression, but claim they are entitled to. We say they are wrong. The law doesn’t entitle them to withhold it. We say it is a wider question affecting all prisoners who write about themselves in particular.”

Ms Foster said Nilsen, when arrested, had admitted the killings — “crimes of the utmost gravity” — and did not contest that lengthy incarceration was necessary.

He later described the killings to author Brian Masters, who wrote a full and detailed biography entitled Killing for Company, which quoted verbatim from Nilsen’s own work.

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