One of the schoolboy killers of James Bulger will tomorrow meet a parole board which could order his release from custody.
Jon Venables, who will attend the meeting at a secret location, could be freed within days if the panel decides he is no longer a risk to the public.
Robert Thompson, Venables' partner in the February 1993 murder, will attend a separate hearing on Wednesday and is also expected to be freed in the near future.
Britain’s Lord Chief Justice Lord Woolf effectively ended the boys' tariff - the minimum period they must spend in custody - last October. He ruled that it would not be beneficial for the boys to spend time in the "corrosive atmosphere" of an adult prison.
The teenagers were also granted an open-ended High Court injunction protecting their anonymity when they are freed from detention with new identities.
Family Division President Dame Elizabeth Butler-Sloss said she was convinced their lives would be at risk if their identities and whereabouts were disclosed. She said she was "compelled" to take steps to protect them, even though they were now adults.
The two killers, who are both 19 in August, have spent their entire detention period in local authority-run secure accommodation. It is likely they will be released into a halfway house rather than given full freedom immediately.
The parole board will see psychiatric and other reports from the trial and up-to-date reports from doctors and criminologists. They will also review the killers' school records and consider any further offending that may have taken place during their detention.
Ms Dee Warner, of pressure group Mothers Against Murder and Aggression, said protesters will hold a demonstration outside the Parole Board's London headquarters tomorrow. The families of murder victims will be among the crowd, but James's parents, Ralph Bulger and Denise Fergus, are not expected to attend.
Ms Warner said: "Is there an expert panel that is going to give us a 100 per cent guarantee that they will never commit another offence like that? "Is anyone going to be held accountable if they do commit a new offence?"
PA