Boys, 11, Go on Trial in Toddler’s Murder : Crime: The two are the youngest boys to face such a charge in Britain.

Two 11-year-old boys went on trial in a British court Monday, charged with luring toddler Jamie Bulger from his mother in a Liverpool shopping mall and stoning him to death in a case that drew international attention.

The two children, the youngest boys ever charged with murder in Britain, are accused of marching the child across Liverpool to a remote railroad line and subjecting him to “a prolonged and violent death” by pelting him with stones, bricks and a piece of metal--fracturing his skull in many places--before tossing his body onto the tracks.

Both defendants--because of their age referred to as Child A and Child B--previously pleaded not guilty to the charges of abducting and murdering the youngster on Feb. 12 this year.

“Notwithstanding their age,” prosecutor Richard Henriques told the jury of nine men and three women, “it’s alleged they both intended either to kill James or to cause him really serious injury--they both knew their behavior was seriously wrong.”

The child’s body was cut in half by a passing train, although a pathologist judged that he was already dead, according to evidence presented to the court in the northwestern city of Preston.

In addition to proving guilt in a crime involving juveniles, in Britain prosecutors must show that the defendants knew what they were doing was wrong.

In setting out the prosecution’s case on the opening day of the trial, prosecutor Henriques said that on the day of his death, the victim accompanied his mother to various stores.

Earlier that day, said Henriques, the boys, who were 10 at the time, attempted to abduct another 2-year-old from the same shopping mall but were thwarted when the concerned mother called out to her son to join her.

Several witnesses, said the prosecutor, saw the two defendants annoying other people as they wandered around the shopping mall on an afternoon when they should have been in school.

Others are prepared to testify that they saw the boys dragging the child away from the shopping area, on “a very long and distressing walk for a 2-year-old toddler,” the prosecutor said.

“You will hear time and again of witnesses seeing a little child clearly very distressed, but each appeared to have taken the same view--the little child must have been with an older brother or brothers and was being looked after,” Henriques said.

One woman saw the child with two bruises on his head and told the boys that he should get treatment, said the prosecutor, and they both said they would take him to a nearby police station.

The three boys were sighted near the railroad embankment about two hours after the abduction.

“He was then taken on to a railway line, subjected by the two defendants to a prolonged and violent death,” Henriques said. “Bricks, stones and a piece of metal appeared to have been thrown at James on that railway line.

“He sustained many fractures of the skull and death resulted, in the pathologist’s words, from multiple blunt force injuries to the head.”

The trial is expected to last two to four weeks.