LONDON — Britain’s notorious “Great Train Robber,” nearly 80 and close to death, was released Thursday from his prison sentence, but he’s expected to stay right where he is — in a hospital bed.
Britain’s Justice Secretary Jack Straw said he decided to release Ronnie Biggs on compassionate grounds after he fell seriously ill this week in his cell at Norwich Prison, 120 miles northeast of London.
The prison officers watching Biggs at the Norwich and Norfolk Hospital will remain overnight, and leave tomorrow, once the paperwork for his release is complete, Straw said. Biggs’ 80th birthday is Saturday.
His lawyer, Giovanni Di Stefano, said Biggs was being released to die.
“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,” he told Sky News.
Biggs was part of a gang that robbed a Glasgow-to-London mail train in August 1963, in what was called the “heist of the century.” The robbery netted 2.6 million pounds — worth more than $50 million today. The train driver Jack Mills was hit over the head and left unconscious.
Police launched a nationwide hunt and most of the gang was soon rounded up.
The train drivers union Aslef was quick to criticize Straw’s decision to free Biggs.
“It’s ludicrous that a man who was part of a gang that committed a violent crime and attacked an innocent man and hit him with an iron bar should be a person who deserves clemency,” said General Secretary Keith Norman.
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