Infamous North-East serial rapist is referred for parole

In March 2004, Antoni Imiela, a railway worker raised in County Durham, was given seven life sentences at Maidstone Crown Court for a series of stranger rapes across the Home Counties against women and girls as young as 10.

Last week it emerged that cabbie John Worboys - who was jailed indefinitely in 2009, with a minimum term of eight years, for drugging and sexually assaulting women passengers - would be freed.

Some of his victims were not told of his imminent release, prompting an apology from the chairman of the Parole Board, while a review into how the board makes its decisions has been launched.

Any hearing to decide Imiela's parole is unlikely to take place in the next six months.

A spokesman for the Parole Board said: "We can confirm that the Ministry of Justice has referred the case of Antoni Imiela for a parole review.

"The review is following the standard six-month process for all indeterminate sentence prisoners and will be reviewed on the papers in the first instance.

"The review may be concluded on the papers or alternatively it may be directed to an oral hearing."

Imiela, now 63, from Appledore, near Ashford, in Kent, carried out a series of sex attacks across the South East on women and girls he had never met, earning him the nickname the M25 rapist.

He grabbed his victims, dragged them into a secluded area, threatened to kill them and hit them.

After being convicted in 2004, his DNA was put on a police database.

A cold case review into a 1987 Christmas Day sex attack found a match between the victim, 31-year-old Sheila Jankowitz, and Imiela.

Imiela was sentenced to 12 years at the Old Bailey in March 2013 after being found guilty of rape, indecent assault and another serious sex offence against the mother-of-two.

Born in Lubeck, West Germany, to a Polish father and German mother, his family moved to the UK in 1961 and spent time in Worthing, West Sussex, before settling in Newton Aycliffe.