Lawyers for Jon Venables and Robert Thompson - who were both aged 10 when they committed the murder - successfully argued that their anonymity should be protected by law after their release, which could be in a few months' time.

The decision was based on fears that the boys would become victims of revenge attacks if information about their new identities became known.

Last October the Lord Chief Justice, Lord Woolf, effectively ended the boys' sentence after eight years in secure accommodation, ruling that they should be considered for immediate parole rather than transfer to the "corrosive atmosphere" of young offenders' institutions.

Public opinion 'running high'

In her ruling on the boys' anonymity, Dame Elizabeth Butler-Sloss said there was "the real possibility of serious physical harm and possibly death from vengeful members of the public and from the Bulger family".

A family friend of the Bulgers, Lesley Halligan, reacted angrily to the court ruling. She said: "Public opinion is running very high and the fact that they are getting new identities and total anonymity paid for by the taxpayers' money is totally wrong."

The ban on identifying the boys only covers publication in England and Wales.

On 12 February 1993, Venables and Thompson abducted two-year-old James from a shopping centre in Bootle, near Liverpool, before battering him to death and leaving his body on a railway line.

The case provoked widespread public anger and outrage, and the boys were placed in a secure detention unit.

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