Profile: Ronnie Biggs

http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/rss/-/1/hi/uk/3548190.stm

Version 0 of 1.

Biggs escaped to Brazil, which has no extradition treaty with the UK

"I have been in jail for a long time and I want to die a free man."

So said Great Train Robber and criminal icon Ronnie Biggs, in a statement issued from Norwich prison in 2007.

He has been behind bars ever since the Sun newspaper flew him back to Britain from his sanctuary in Brazil in 2001.

But his life before then, said Biggs, "had not been an easy ride over the years".

"Even in Brazil I was a prisoner of my own making," he said.

If Biggs, who is applying for parole once again, is eventually freed, it will be the latest in a long series of events that have marked him out as one of Britain's most famous escapees.

It is 45 years since he and his gang stole £2.6m from the Glasgow to London mail train, but Ronnie Biggs has seldom been out of the news.

His escape from prison, just 15 months after he began a 30-year jail sentence, boosted his profile from a bit-part player in the robbery to a celebrity fugitive.

My last wish is to walk into a Margate pub as an Englishman and buy a pint of bitter Ronnie Biggs

And his success at evading recapture for so long drew a sort of fascinated admiration from the British press and its readers.

Less publicised was the fate of one of Biggs' victims - train driver Jack Mills who was coshed by an unknown gang member, and who never fully recovered from his injuries.

In April 1965, Biggs scaled the wall at London's Wandsworth prison with a home-made rope ladder and dropped on to a waiting removal van.

Biggs initially fled to Paris, with his wife Charmian and two sons, Farley and Chris.

He had plastic surgery and then moved to Australia. But when Scotland Yard tracked him down he escaped to Brazil, which had no extradition treaty with the UK.

In 1974 Scotland Yard detective Jack Slipper, who spent his career tracking Biggs, managed to arrest him in Rio de Janeiro

But once again Biggs managed to evade British justice.

This time he successfully argued against extradition because he had fathered a son by a Brazilian girlfriend, having started proceedings to divorce his English wife.

Evading the law

Biggs avoided arrest again in 1977 when he attended a drinks party on board a British frigate docked in Rio.

And four years later he was kidnapped by a gang of ex-British soldiers who smuggled him to Barbados by boat.

Yet again, however, he pulled off a Houdini-like escape and used extradition laws to get himself returned to Brazil.

In 1997 the British government tried and failed again to get Biggs extradited.

Ronnie Biggs was in his mid-30s when he went on the run

Biggs' notoriety meant he was able to regularly charge newspapers for the "scoop" that he was coming home.

He even attracted the attention of the Sex Pistols, who used him as a vocalist on at least two of their songs.

It was the Sun that finally brought Biggs home in May 2001, when he was very ill.

A statement issued by his son Michael said that his father "at the age of 71 and fearing that the end of his life is close, he has chosen to voluntarily return to this country.

"My father took this decision knowing that he would be arrested and imprisoned."

Biggs and his family denied that he returned to the UK solely to seek free health care.

Through his son he told a newspaper: "My last wish is to walk into a Margate pub as an Englishman and buy a pint of bitter."

On his return Biggs was immediately arrested and taken to high-security Belmarsh Prison to serve the remaining years of his original sentence.

In 2002, he married Raimunda Rothen, the mother of his son Michael.

Biggs' lawyers say he has since suffered two strokes and has facial paralysis, which means he cannot speak or eat.

In 2005, then home secretary Charles Clarke declined Biggs' appeal for release because his illness was not deemed terminal.

However two years later Biggs was moved from Belmarsh prison to Norwich prison on "compassionate grounds".

In December 2007, Biggs issued a further appeal asking to be released: "I am an old man and often wonder if I truly deserve the extent of my punishment. I have accepted it and only want freedom to die with my family and not in jail."

In February 2009 Biggs fell ill with pneumonia, prompting fresh calls for his release on compassionate grounds.