One of the three British rifle-men who battered a Danish tour guide to death in Cyprus 12 years ago has been freed and flown back to Britain.

Allan Ford (38), from Sutton Coldfield, was freed last Tuesday and flown back to Britain at his own expense, a Foreign Office spokesman said.

The two other men convicted of killing Louise Jensen will be freed by August 22.

To the anger and dismay of Louise's heartbroken family, the three former Royal Green Jackets have served less than half their 25-year sentences for what the trial judges described as "one of the most horrific crimes in recent years".

Louise Jensen's brother, Soren, told The Birmingham Post: "This is bringing back all the fears and the memories. My parents will never get over it. They are very sad and they were very surprised and disappointed that these men are being freed."

On a September night in 1994 Ford, together with Justin Fowler, from Cornwall, and Geoff Pernell, from Oldbury, West Midlands, snatched Louise from the back of her Cypriot boyfriend's motorbike on the outskirts of Ayia Napa.

The trio drove her to a remote spot where the 23-year-old, who was working for a Danish holiday company on her first foreign posting, was sexually assaulted and bludgeoned to death with an Army-issue spade.

When her naked body was recovered from a makeshift grave it was so badly battered that she was identified only by a rose tattoo and a silver ring.

The three were dishonourably discharged by the Army when they were convicted in 1996 and the military cracked down heavily on drunken, off-duty indiscipline. British military personnel are still blanket banned from the centre of the popular resort of Ayia Napa.

"Since that time the British forces have invested a tremendous amount of effort in educating all servicemen and women on the dangers of drink and drugs culture - and in the intervening years our record has shown this has invariably paid off," Dennis Barnes, a spokesman for the British Bases in Cyprus, said.

Louise's parents, Poul and Annette, from Hirtshals in northern Denmark, did their utmost to keep their daughter's killers behind bars.

Denmark's justice minister also appealed to her Cypriot counterpart to reconsider the killers' 'early release', reminding him of the 'deepest dismay' the case had caused in Denmark.

But Cypriot officials explained there was a statutory law on remissions which could only be changed by parliament and the three were not getting special treatment.

Petros Clerides, the island's attorney general, was prosecutor at the trial.

He said: "I'm very, very sorry for the Jensen family. I have only sympathy for the family and I have no reason to feel any sympathy for these three English soldiers. As prosecutor I understood how horrible the crime was but I cannot change the law."

Clerides had managed to secure the toughest possible sentence - life without remission - when the trio were convicted of abducting, conspiring to rape, and killing Louise.

But in 1998 their sentences were shortened on appeal to 25 years.

The Supreme Court in Cyprus agreed their crime was "atrocious" but ruled trial judges erred in not taking into account how young the men were, that they had no previous convictions, and were drunk.

But Soren, 16 when his sister was killed, said the three men had never written or called to apologise.