The Yorkshire Ripper has said he should be allowed to walk free, it has been reported.

Peter Sutcliffe, who is serving life for the brutal murders of 13 women, has broken a 24-year silence in a written statement to the Home Office, according to a national newspaper.

The news comes days after outrage was provoked when it emerged Sutcliffe, 58, was allowed to leave Broadmoor top-security hospital to visit the coastal village of Arnside in Cumbria where his late father's ashes were scattered.

Sutcliffe has made a case for his release by saying he deserves freedom because he is not being treated for mental illness and has not committed a crime for 25 years, the paper reported.

But Sutcliffe's brother, Mick Sutcliffe, of Gilstead, near Bingley, who talks to him by phone every week, has denied in the past that he has any hopes of being freed.

Mick, 54, said: "He will never come out and he knows he won't come out.

"He will stay in Broadmoor until he dies, unless they move him to a similar hospital like Ashworth."

The statement Sutcliffe allegedly wrote to the Home Office reads: "The courts convicted me and now the courts will protect my human rights under Article Eight.

"I am no longer an insane or dangerous person and I am not receiving treatment for any form of mental illness and I have not committed any criminal offence in over 25 years."

The paper also reports Sutcliffe wrote a longer statement talking of his plans to get married but Broadmoor staff censored the letter.

This reads: "I hope to be getting married on or before May 12, 2005. I am looking forward to the wedding date. Since my conviction, never before have I took such a step but I do so to end further speculation into my life. My hope is that my stay at Broadmoor will be reviewed and that they will look favourably on my hopes for my future."

Sutcliffe is said to be planning to marry divorced grandmother Pam Mills, 54, of Leicester, who has been writing to him for ten years.

But Mick has said: "Peter told me he has got engaged but I don't think he will ever get married. I think it is an engagement for the rest of his life, like the bonding of a friendship."

Last week's visit to Cumbria - granted on compassionate grounds by the Home Secretary - was criticised by the families of victims and local MPs.

Sutcliffe was last year refused compassionate leave to attend the funeral of his father John, 81, at Oakworth near Keighley.

In May 1981 Sutcliffe was locked up for life at the Old Bailey for murdering 13 women and leaving seven others for dead in a killing spree which terrified the entire country. His victims included Patricia Atkinson, 32, who was murdered in Bradford in April 1977, Yvonne Pearson, killed in the city the following January, and Bradford University student Barbara Leach, whom he murdered in September 1979.

The Old Bailey jury decided the Ripper was not insane, but a sadistic murderer.

The Home Office said it could not comment on individual cases.