Robber Biggs Refused Parole - 1st Jul 2009 4:26pm
Great Train Robber Biggs Refused Parole
Great Train Robber Ronnie Biggs has been refused parole by Justice Secretary Jack Straw.
Earlier reports suggested Biggs, 79, was to be told he was free to leave prison into the care of a nursing home.
It was claimed Mr Straw would OK his release but the politician has refused parole, saying Biggs is "wholly unrepentant" over his actions.
Mr Straw has gone against the recommendation of the Parole Board.
He said the robber had "outrageously courted the media" while on the run from prison.
He said it was "unacceptable" that Biggs had chosen not to obey the law and tried to avoid the consequences of his decision.
Mr Straw added: "Had he complied with his sentence, he would have been a free man many years ago."
Biggs, who has served a third of his original 30-year jail sentence, is seriously ill.
He has suffered a string of strokes and is currently being treated in Norfolk and Norwich University Hospital for a broken hip and pneumonia.
It was reported he would be moved to the care home in Barnet, north London, near to his son Michael.
Biggs returned to Britain in 2001 after 36 years on the run and was ordered to complete the sentence he interrupted when he escaped from Wandsworth prison in 1965.
Biggs had a walk-on role in the 1964 robbery when a gang held up the overnight Glasgow to London mail train and stole £2.6m (£40m at today's prices).
Locomotive driver Jack Mills was coshed with a metal bar and never returned to work, though Biggs denied being his attacker.
Most of the loot - a record at the time - was spent helping the robbers flee abroad or was left with other villains who spent it.
Biggs lived as a fugitive in Spain and Australia and had plastic surgery before arriving in Brazil, where the absence of an extradition treaty with Britain meant he could stay there a free man.
But it was not the glamorous life it seemed and Biggs struggled to earn enough to live on, often signing bank-notes and T-shirts for tourists who were willing to pay to meet him.
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