Photos of Venables barred from Twitter

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LONDON, Feb. 25 (UPI) -- Those who posted alleged photographs of a man who, as a child, abducted and killed a 2-year-old, will be prosecuted, the British attorney general's office said.

Jon Venables was 10 when he and classmate Robert Thompson abducted James Bulger, 2, from a Liverpool shopping center in 1993. The boy's body was found two days later on a railroad track, and Venables and Thompson were convicted and jailed.

Venables was released in 2001 and given a new identity, but images recently appeared on Twitter claiming to show an adult Venables, the British newspaper The Mirror reported Monday.

Dame Elizabeth Butler-Sloss of Britain's High Court Family Division, in an unprecedented court order, banned the publication of any information leading to the release of Venables' or Thompson's new identities, a statement from the attorney general's office, saying, if a picture "claims to be of Venables or Thompson ... there will be a breach of the order. Providing details of the new identities ... is also prohibited. This order applies to material which is on the Internet."

The order added release of the Internet pictures means "potentially innocent individuals may be wrongly identified as being one of the two men."