Judge: We must protect Bulger killers

The killers of two-year-old James Bulger are now reformed characters who deserve to be protected with anonymity and new identities, England's most senior judge has claimed.

Lord Woolf, the Lord Chief Justice, spoke out in a Radio 4 interview about the fate of Robert Thompson and Jon Venables.

They were aged 10 at the time of the killing and were freed last year. He said it was essential to protect the pair, who will both be 20 next month, because of the threat from vigilantes. The comments, to be broadcast this week, break the tradition that senior judges do not comment in public on cases in which they have been involved.

Lord Woolf admitted that he had reservations about speaking out, but said it was important that the public understands the role judges play in such cases.

He said: "Children can do things when they are children which they would never do in their later life.

"I have insight into what happened to those two youngsters, because I saw reports which revealed how they developed while they were in custody. The reports illustrate that children grow up."

Reminded by interviewer Sue Mac-Gregor that James never had a chance to grow up, Lord Woolf said: "What we have to realise is that everybody, except those who commit the most serious crimes are eventually going to be let back into society."

Thompson and Venables murdered James after abducting him from the Strand shopping centre in Bootle, Merseyside, in 1993. Images of them leading James away were captured on grainy CCTV images.

When they were jailed indefinitely the trial judge described their crime as "an act of unparalleled evil and barbarity".

The two won their freedom in separate parole board hearings in June last year after spending just over eight years in secure accommodation. They

were released with new identities to undisclosed parts of Britain. Their release followed a ruling by the Lord Chief Justice that they had served their punishment.

Relatives of the Bulger family threatened to hunt down and kill the two men. But Lord Woolf said: "It would not bring baby Bulger back to life if one or other of those young men had in turn been killed."

In his interview, for the programme Fifty Years On to be broadcast on Wednesday, Lord Woolf also attacked the Government's plans to scrap jury trials for some offenders.

He said that juries remained a vital pillar of the criminal justice system, and added: "They are a huge safeguard to the public as a whole. I think that, so far as criminal proceedings are concerned, we are absolutely right to cling to our juries and our jury form of trial."

Ministers have already clashed with the House of Lords over plans to downgrade the role of juries.

Since the interview with Lord Woolf was recorded, the Government has announced plans to abolish juries in serious fraud trials and in cases where juries have been intimidated.