Great Train Robber Ronnie Biggs has been granted “compassionate release” from his prison sentence and will be freed tomorrow.
Britain’s Justice Secretary Jack Straw said the decision was based on medical evidence that Biggs’s condition had deteriorated and he was not expected to recover.
Biggs, who turns 80 this weekend, is severely ill in hospital with pneumonia and doctors have said his prognosis is not good.
Last month Mr Straw rejected Biggs’s application for parole on the grounds that the robber was “wholly unrepentant” about his crimes. But the decision on compassionate release was based on “different considerations”, Mr Straw said.
“The medical evidence clearly shows that Mr Biggs is very ill and that his condition has deteriorated recently, culminating in his re-admission to hospital. His condition is not expected to improve,” he said. “It is for that reason that I am granting Mr Biggs compassionate release on medical grounds."
Biggs, from Lambeth, south London, was a member of a 15-strong gang which attacked the Glasgow to London mail train at Ledburn, Buckinghamshire, in August 1963, and escaped with £2.6 million in used banknotes.
He was given a 30-year sentence but after 15 months he escaped from Wandsworth prison in south west London by climbing a 30ft wall and fleeing in a furniture van.
Biggs was on the run for more than 30 years, living in Australia and Brazil before returning to the UK voluntarily in 2001 in search of medical treatment. He was locked up in Belmarsh high-security prison on his return before being moved to a specialist medical unit at Norwich prison.
Biggs’s legal adviser, Giovanni Di Stefano, told Sky News: “He is being released effectively to die and that cannot be considered a victory. But it’s a victory for common sense and Mr Straw has made the right decision. This man is ill, he’s going to die, he is not going to any pub or going to Rio, he is going to stay in hospital.”
If his condition was to improve, Biggs would be transferred to a nursing home in Barnet, north London, near his son’s home.
Agencies