By Anna Tomforde Aug 7, 2009, 12:43 GMT
London - Ronnie Biggs, the 'Great Train Robber' who gained notoriety as Britain's best known convict, is 'over the moon' about his release from prison just in time for his 80th birthday, his son Michael said Friday.
Biggs turns 80 on Saturday which, coincidentally, also marks the 46th anniversary of the audacious raid on a Royal Mail train that made headlines around the world and was quickly dubbed the 'crime of the century.'
Biggs was a member of a 15-strong gang which attacked the Glasgow- to-London mail train in Buckinghamshire, north of London, on August 8, 1963, getting away with 2.6 million pounds (4.4 million dollars) in bank notes, a record haul at the time.
He was given a 30-year jail term, but escaped from London's Wandsworth prison after 15 months, eluding capture by Scotland Yard for more than 36 years.
During that time, Biggs lived in France, Australia and Brazil, from where he returned voluntarily in 2001.
But the once dashing Biggs, who enjoyed the high life and milked the glamour and publicity associated with the raid, is now a frail and seriously ill old man.
Unable to speak, eat or walk after a number of strokes, he relayed his elation about his freedom via a spelling board, his son said. 'He is very happy indeed.'
Biggs' moment of formal freedom was marked by three prison guards leaving his bedside in a hospital in Norwich, eastern Britain, where he is seriously ill with pneumonia.
He was transferred to the hospital from prison 10 days ago.
'He will stay in hospital, we have no immediate plans to transfer him,' Michael Biggs said. 'Hopefully my father will be able to make some sort of recovery,' he added.
On Thursday, Justice Secretary Jack Straw agreed to Biggs' release on compassionate grounds, following medical advice which showed that the prisoner was seriously ill and that his chances of recovery were slim.
By agreeing to his release, Straw overturned an earlier decision in July in which he refused parole to the ageing prisoner.
'In this case, I have had to consider the medical evidence against well-established criteria - specifically whether death was likely to occur soon and whether the prisoner was bedridden or severely incapacitated,' Straw said in a statement.
'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,' Biggs's legal adviser, Giovanni Di Stefano, said.
Straw's decision marked a somewhat embarrassing U-turn in the long and antagonistic relationship between Biggs and the British establishment, commentators said Friday.
'Straw misjudged the public mood by not freeing him earlier,' said Nick Cohen of the Observer newspaper. 'He (Straw) was worried about headlines of vindictiveness,' Cohen added.
But not everyone was happy about the turn of events.
The train drivers' union Aslef, which recalled that train driver Jack Mills was hit over the head with an iron bar in the 1963 robbery, said it was 'unjust' to show clemency to Biggs.
'Biggs was no Robin Hood,' said Keith Norman of Aslef.
'While driver Mills was lying in hospital, the man involved in attacking him while he was going about his daily work, was enjoying himself in bars in South America. There is a clear and desperate injustice in that,' said Norman.
The train driver never returned to work and died months later, but a link with his injuries was never established.
Bruce Reynolds, the leader of the 15-strong train robber gang told Sky News that he was 'overjoyed for Ronnie.'
Reynolds fled to Mexico after the raid but was captured in 1968 and given a 25-year prison term.
The raid inspired the 1988 film Buster, in which Phil Collins played Ronald 'Buster' Edwards, the ex-boxer and gang member who fled to Mexico but gave himself up in 1966.
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