Inquiry report due on ex-Beatle's attacker

The findings of an inquiry into the care of a schizophrenic who repeatedly stabbed George Harrison are due to be published.

Michael Abram was detained indefinitely in a secure hospital following a two-day trial at Oxford Crown Court in November last year.

Abram, from Huyton, Merseyside, was charged with the attempted murder of the musician and his wife Olivia at their Oxfordshire mansion.

The jury was told to acquit deluded Abram, who believed the Beatles were "witches", on the grounds that he was temporarily insane.

Believing he was on a mission from God, Abram, now 35, staked out the Harrisons' 34-acre Henley-on-Thames estate before breaking in early one morning.

Harrison was battered senseless with a table lamp and stabbed at least 10 times by the intruder who threatened to kill his wife with electrical flex.

In a frantic effort to save her husband, Mrs Harrison, described in court as a "model of bravery", hit Abram with a brass poker and then a table lamp.

The paranoid schizophrenic had spent two weeks on the psychiatric ward at Whiston Hospital, on Merseyside, a month prior to the December 1999 attack but was sent home following an alleged assault on a nurse.

At the time he was living in a squalid flat on the 10th floor of a near-deserted tower block in the Page Moss area of Huyton.

His mother Lynda was critical of the care afforded to her son, saying: "All the alarm bells were ringing but they were dismissed."