A GANG member involved in the sadistic torture and murder of a South Cheshire market trader has been jailed for life.

Sentencing Otis Matthews, 27, at Liverpool Crown Court, Mr Justice David Clark said he had been close to the heart of the plot and ordered him to serve a minimum of 24 years.

Matthews, of Melbourne Avenue, Stret-ford, Manchester, was convicted of murdering Brian Waters and conspiring to cause grievous bodily harm to him and farm worker Suleman Razak.

Two other men, James Raven, 44, an undercover reporter from Radcliffe, and John Wilson, 54, of Glossop, were convicted of the murder last August.

The jury was unable to agree a verdict on Matthews but he was found guilty following a retrial.

Mr Waters, 43, was attacked by an armed gang in front of his 26-year-old son Gavin and daughter Natalie, 22, at Burnt House Farm in Tabley, near Knutsford.

The judge told Matthews the crimes had been 'exceptionally sadistic and the violence had been gratuitous and extreme.'

Mr Waters, who lived with wife Julia and their two children at Mainwaring Close, Stapeley, Nantwich, was humiliated during a three-hour ordeal, believed to have been over a £20,000 debt.

He suffered 123 external injuries, 24 fractured ribs, a collapsed lung, a throat injury and burns to his back.

He was strung upside down from a beam and repeatedly savagely punched and beaten with canes and bars, had staples driven into his head and body and was shown no mercy.

Mr Razak, 20, who was said to have regularly watered cannabis plants at the farm for Mr Waters, a convicted drugs smuggler, was also repeatedly beaten, had molten plastic dripped on his back and had his head and neck stapled.

He was strung upside down and immersed in a barrel of water, a pillowcase placed over his head and sprayed with a substance and set on fire.

Patrick Roche, defending on Friday, said that Matthews 'continues to maintain his innocence'.