A British banker jailed for life for the horrifying murder of two Indonesian women at his upscale Hong Kong apartment in a cocaine-fuelled rampage has had his appeal rejected, a court ruled Friday.

Rurik Jutting, 32, tortured Sumarti Ningsih, 23, for three days before slashing her throat with a serrated knife and stuffing her body into a suitcase.

Days later, and with Ningsih's corpse on his balcony, the Cambridge University graduate picked up Seneng Mujiasih, 26, for the same purpose, and killed her when she started screaming.

Back in jail: Rurik Jutting jailed for life for the horrifying murder of two Indonesian women at his upscale Hong Kong apartment in a cocaine-fuelled rampage has had his appeal rejected

Jutting, now 32, had pleaded guilty to manslaughter on the grounds of diminished responsibility but was found guilty of murder, with the judge at the time describing the killings as 'sickening in the extreme'.

Jutting's defence team had argued that judge Michael Stuart-Moore repeatedly gave incorrect directions to the jury during the trial last year when explaining how they should determine whether Jutting's state of mind had impaired his responsibility for his actions.

Defence lawyer Gerard McCoy said the judge had 'wrongly and prescriptively directed the jury' to focus on whether Jutting had mental disorders, arguing that 'abnormality of mind need not be a disorder'.

A judgment handed down by the Court of Appeal on Friday rejected the appeal bid, saying there is 'no merit in this ground of appeal'.

A panel of three judges unanimously ruled that they were 'satisfied' with the judge's directions to the jury.

Killer: Jutting tortured and killed Sumarti Ningsih, 23, and Seneng Mujiasih, 26, in 2014

In the original gruelling ten-day trial in the autumn of 2016, the jury heard how Jutting became obsessed with slavery, rape and torture - fantasies he acted out on his first victim, Ningsih.

The jury was forced to watch iPhone footage of parts of the attack as well as Jutting's own self-recorded descriptions of how he had used pliers, sex toys and a belt during the killing.

He then went on to murder his second victim, Mujiasih, slashing her throat in his living room.

At the end of the trial, Stuart-Moore said Jutting had known what he was doing and described him as an 'archetypal sexual predator' who presented an extreme danger to women.

The jury in the original trial did not find that Jutting suffered from a mental disorder such as sexual sadism disorder or narcissistic personality disorder, according to the judgement.

'The applicant had traits only of sexual sadism and narcissistic personality, rather than disorders,' it said, meaning that there were no grounds for a ruling of 'diminished responsibility' for the crimes.