Ruling awaited on protection for Bulger killers
A High Court judge is set to make a ruling on whether there should be a life-long injunction imposed to protect the new identities of the killers of toddler James Bulger once they are freed.
Family Division President Dame Eizabeth Butler-Sloss has been asked by lawyers for Jon Venables and Robert Thompson to grant an injunction which would virtually bar any publicity about the pair after their release from secure local authority accommodation.
Venables and Thompson, who have now both turned 18, hope to win parole early this year following a ruling by the Lord Chief Justice, Lord Woolf, that they had served the minimum tariff necessary under their life sentences.
The pair, who were both aged 10 when they beat two-year-old James to death on a railway line in Liverpool in February 1993, are unlikely to be sent to a young offenders' institution or adult prison.
An interim injunction already bans the media from taking or publishing photographs of the pair or reporting on their progress or treatment.
Their lawyers have asked Dame Elizabeth to continue that injunction for the rest of the pair's lives. The move is opposed by media organisations now that they have turned 18.
Dame Elizabeth, who will give a judgment at 2pm on Monday, has faced the task of balancing the youths' right to privacy and family life under the European Human Rights Convention and the Human Rights Act against the media's right to freedom of expression.
During a hearing at the High Court in London last year, Edward Fitzgerald QC, for Venables, argued that it was the duty of the state to protect the two from threats of violence, and that their right to life and freedom from persecution took precedence over the media's right to freedom of expression.
Mr Fitzgerald said disclosure of any information about their whereabouts or their assumed identities when they are released would expose them to "serious physical risk and serious psychological fear and the likelihood of harassment".
Desmond Browne QC, representing the various newspaper groups opposing the application, argued that the courts should prosecute those who make threats against the killers of James Bulger rather than try to gag the press with orders banning the pair's identification.
