M25 killer Kenneth Noye to be moved to open prison

Kenneth Noye fled to Spain after he murdered Stephen Cameron in 1996

Road-rage killer Kenneth Noye is to be transferred to an open prison after the justice secretary accepted a Parole Board recommendation.

Noye, 70, was convicted of murdering 21-year-old Stephen Cameron in an attack on the M25 in Kent in 1996.

He was sentenced to life with a minimum term of 16 years in 2000.

Last month the Parole Board said it was not directing Noye's release, but recommended that he be transferred to "open conditions".

Noye is expected to be moved to the open prison within about six weeks though no date has yet been set.

A statement from the Ministry of Justice said: "Public protection is our top priority and transfers to open conditions are made only after a thorough, expert, risk assessment carried out by the independent Parole Board."

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Stephen Cameron was 21 when he was stabbed to death by Noye

In 2015 the then Justice Secretary Michael Gove rejected the Parole Board's recommendation for Noye's transfer to an open prison.

The BBC's Home Affairs Correspondent Danny Shaw said since then Noye has apparently "expressed remorse and guilt and made progress in rehabilitation".

Earlier this year he won a High Court challenge against the refusal decision, which his counsel argued was "unlawful and irrational".

The Parole Board can consider him for release in 2019. It could also choose to leave him in an open prison or transfer him back to closed conditions.

Profile: Kenneth Noye

Noye is one of Britain's most notorious criminals and was convicted in 1986 for his involvement in the 1983 Brink's-Mat heist - one of the UK's biggest robberies.

He was sentenced to 14 years in jail and released just two years before the murder of Stephen Cameron.

The electrician was stabbed to death on a slip road of the M25 at Swanley in Kent.

Noye later claimed he killed Mr Cameron in self-defence during a road-rage fight.

He went on the run after the killing, but was arrested in Spain in 1998 and extradited back to the UK.

He was jailed in 2000 with a minimum term set at 16 years in 2002 by the then Home Secretary David Blunkett.