Internet users prosecuted

Child killers’ pics

LONDON, Feb 26, (AFP): Britain’s top lawyer launched contempt proceedings on Monday against Internet users who circulated photographs purporting to be of the notorious killers of two-year-old James Bulger.

Jon Venables and Robert Thompson have not been seen in public since they were jailed for the sadistic 1993 murder of the toddler, which they carried out when they were just 10 years old.

Such was the public outrage at the killing that when the pair were released on parole in 2001, they were given secret new identities for their own safety, protected by a court order. However photographs have appeared online in recent days purporting to show Venables and Thompson as they are now, aged 30.

Attorney General Dominic Grieve warned that these images, whether or not they are pictures of the two killers, constituted an offence punishable by a fine or jail. “The attorney general has today decided to institute contempt proceedings against a number of individuals who have been identified as having posted online photographs purporting to be of Jon Venables or Robert Thompson,” his office said in a statement. LONDON, Feb 26, (AP): A former boyfriend of British socialite Tamara Ecclestone has been sentenced to four years in prison for plotting to blackmail her for £200,000 ($303,000).

Derek Rose was convicted of the extortion attempt against Ecclestone, daughter of Formula One chief Bernie Ecclestone.

Rose dated Ecclestone, now 28, in 2002. Prosecutors said that after Ecclestone appeared on a reality TV show called “Billion Dollar Girl” in 2011, he sent an email threatening to reveal personal details to a tabloid newspaper unless she paid.