A heartless killer who served seven years in a Lithuanian jail was allowed to come to Britain to train as a chef.

Brutal Erikas Kalnickis, 26, was trained at a top hotel chain – before moving to the Kent coast to pack food.

But, within a year, he was plotting to carry out another attack on two Ramsgate brothers in what a judge called "callous, cold-hearted cruelty".

Now Kalnickis has been given a life sentence – while the hunt for his accomplice continues.

Their victims - Shaun Vizzard, 45, and older brother Michael O’Dowd, 66 - had been together in their Ramsgate home checking items on eBay in November last year.

Simon Taylor, prosecuting, told how at 5.30pm the brothers thought a neighbour was outside – but before Shaun could open the front door "it swung open" and two armed men burst inside.

The terrified pair were then subjected to a 45-minute "sustained ordeal" in which they were subjected to "degrading humiliation".

Canterbury Crown Court heard they were repeatedly punched, tied up with wire, gagged and had pillow cases put over their heads.

The robbers demanded £1,000 while one brandished a 10-inch knife and screamed: "I'm going to cut your throats. I'm going to kill you."

The petrified brothers then had a screwdriver and knife pushed into their faces – while a cigarette was held just a quarter of an inch from Mr Vizzard's eye.

Kalnickis – high on heroin and amphetamines - and his fellow robber then stamped on Mr Vizzard’s hands and slashed a clump of Mr O’Dowd's hair.

"i'm going to cut your throats. i'm going to kill you…" – what the victims were told during their ordeal

They then ransacked the house, snatching credit cards and car keys, before fleeing in one of their victim’s cars.

But Mr Taylor said that before leaving, the two warned the brothers not to report their attack or they would return to kill "you and your whole family".

Later that night, a woman reported to police how two men had returned to Kalnickis' home in Northdown Road, Cliftonville, boasting of their attack.

Officers stormed the flat and found Kalnickis hiding in dirty laundry – and then checked with Lithuanian police about his background.

They discovered that in May 2002, when he was just 16, he and another man had gone to their victim's home for cigarettes.

Mr Taylor told how they found the man drunk on the floor – and then set about kicking and punching him 10 times, before clubbing him with a piece of wood 20 times.

"At one stage Kalnickis lifted the victim’s head by the hair, tied a noose around his neck and tried to hang him from a beam," he said.

“The noose broke under the victim’s weight and Kalnickis then tried to cut off his private parts with a knife before throwing a TV at him causing one of his eyes to fall out."

The prosecutor said the two, believing their victim was dead, set the apartment alight with paper - only for him to later die from the fumes.

Kalnickis was convicted of homicide and robbery and jailed for seven years.

He was released in May 2009 and came to Britain in June the following year.

His barrister Dominic Webber told how he got a "three to four month" apprenticeship with a hotel chain after doing a chef’s course in Lithuania.

"He then did other work, working for an organisation called Planet Earth, packing vegetables and driving a fork lift truck."

Judge Adele Williams said the "terror attack" on the brothers "had chilling similarities to the earlier incident" and was "a grave crime in which he had used extreme violence".

She said the brothers have now been so traumatised that they are "too frightened to stay in and too frightened to go out".

"You have robbed them of any sense of security or well-being," she said. "They are living in fear, not only because of their ordeal but because one of the attackers is still at large."

Kalnickis pleaded guilty to aggravated burglary and was told he would have to serve a minimum sentence of six years before he could be considered for parole.

The judge said "right-minded people regarded his offence with revulsion" and his crime deserved "a sentence of life imprisonment".

"This was callous, cold-hearted cruelty," she added.