<div><p>Two young brothers were jailed for at least five years on Friday for a "sadistic" attack on a pair of fellow youngsters which shocked the country and fuelled a political row.</p><p>The brothers, aged 11 and 12, were convicted of torturing and assaulting a nine-year-old and an 11-year-old boy in the South Yorkshire town of Edlington, near Doncaster, last April.</p><p>The court heard harrowing details of how the pair lured their victims to a secluded spot before forcing them to strip and sexually abuse each other, attacking them with bricks, strangling them and making them eat nettles.</p><p>"The fact is this was prolonged, sadistic violence for no reason other than that you got a real kick out of hurting and humiliating them," said the judge, sentencing them to an indeterminate jail term, but of at least five years.</p><p>"Your crimes are truly exceptional," he said at Sheffield Crown Court, adding: "The bottom line for the two of you is that I'm sure you both pose a very high risk of serious harm to others."</p><p>Neither the attackers nor their victims can be named.</p><p>The case -- which been compared to the 1993 murder of two-year-old Jamie Bulger by two 10-year-old boys in Liverpool -- has fueled debate about youth crime and social policy in Britain.</p><p>The court heard how the brothers watched ultra-violent movies as part of a "toxic home life" of "routine aggression, violence and chaos," while one of them smoked cannabis from the age of nine and drank cider.</p><p>Conservative leader David Cameron raised the case with Prime Minister Gordon Brown in the House of Commons earlier this week, calling for a serious case review into the attacks to be published in full.</p><p>Brown -- fighting to avoid ouster in elections due by June -- insisted that authorities would learn the lessons from the case.</p><p>While calling the attacks "one of the most tragic cases we could see," he said: "I do not want Britain to be defined by the appalling violence and irresponsibility that's been shown to the youngsters by two other youngsters."</p><img src="http://admatch-syndication.mochila.com/images/ad.gif?aid=67516689&bid=informcom" /></div><div id="copyright"><div>

Copyright 2010  <a href="http://www.afp.com/english/links/?pid=copyright">AFP European Edition</a></div></div>