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In unanimous decision, Hong Kong jury finds British banker Rurik Jutting guilty of brutal double murder

A British investment banker who brutally slit the throats of two Indonesian women he paid for sex in 2014 was convicted of double murder by a Hong Kong jury on Tuesday.

The High Court verdict means Rurik Jutting, 31, faces a life sentence behind bars for the savage murders of Sumarti Ningsih, 23, and Seneng Mujiasih, 26.

The nine-member jury comprising four women and five men had deliberated behind closed doors for close to four hours.

They unanimously found the Briton guilty of both charges.

That also meant they rejected Jutting's defence of diminished responsibility, in which he argued that he was suffering from an abnormality of mind, induced by mental diseases such as alcohol and cocaine use disorders, that substantially impaired his control at the time of the killings.

A group of protesters from Indonesian migrant worker organisations hold placards and a photo of the victims' family members outside the High Court in Hong Kong.Anthony Wallace | AFP | Getty Images

The finale to the high-profile case drew a full house of lawyers, reporters and members of the public from all over the world, with many left waiting outside the courtroom as they could not squeeze into the packed venue.

The court previously heard that Jutting met Sumarti through an Internet forum and held her captive for three days in the last week of October 2014, during which he tortured, raped and killed her despite telling the Indonesian that he loved her.

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He subsequently recorded in his iPhone monologues that the combination of alcohol and cocaine plus the physical torture of someone had given him an unprecedented sense of enjoyment that made him realise it was not going to be a one-off event.

A few days later, on October 31, he went shopping for sex toys and hardware like a hammer, ropes and nails, and picked up Seneng from a bar in Wan Chai.

But his attempts at recreating the imprisonment soon failed as within 20 minutes of her arrival, Seneng started shouting upon seeing a homemade gag he had prepared for her.

During a violent struggle, Jutting cut her throat and left her to bleed.

Psychiatrists were later told that he had started using up to 20 grams of cocaine a day the month before the killings as he had become acquainted with a drug dealer who could supply him round-the-clock.

Jutting also claimed that he had been drinking two bottles of spirits plus two to three cans of Red Bull a day in the same month.

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