Ronnie Biggs denied parole

Ronnie Biggs was told today he will remain in prison after Justice Secretary Jack Straw refused to grant him parole.

Mr Straw said the Great Train Robber was "wholly unrepentant" about his actions and 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.

Biggs was eligible for release on Friday, by which time he will have served 10 years of his 30-year sentence.

The Parole Board, which met earlier this month, recommended his release, saying he posed a "manageable" threat to the public.

But it noted he was unrepentant about fleeing prison and going on the run for 35 years.

Mr Straw has the power to reject its recommendations under sentencing rules in place when Biggs was convicted.

Biggs, who is 79, is seriously unwell, having suffered a series of strokes.

He cannot eat or speak, can barely walk and last weekend broke his hip when he fell out of his bed in Norwich Prison.

He is now in the Norfolk and Norwich Hospital, which refused to comment on his condition.

But sources said Biggs had deteriorated in the past 24 hours and medics classed him as "poorly".

He was being treated on a general ward and has not been moved to an intensive care unit, the source said.

The Parole Board is unlikely to look again at the decision for many months unless new information came to light. Biggs's parole has to be reviewed again within two years.

That means Biggs will not be free to celebrate his 80th birthday on August 8, 46 years to the day since the raid.

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 made off off with £2.6 million in used banknotes.

He was given the 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.

He was on the run for more than 30 years, living in Spain, 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.

Mark Leech, editor of the Prisons Handbook, said: "Jack Straw says he's unrepentant, and he may be right. But that's not the issue: it's about whether a frail, elderly old man, who cannot walk or talk and who has to be fed through a tube should still be in prison almost half a century after he committed the crime which put him there.

This article has 2 comments