Compassion - for what?

On the 8th August 1963, a fifteen-man gang hijacked a post office train travelling from London to Glasgow, stealing £2.6 million-worth of used bank notes in the process (around £38 million adjusted for inflation) in what would come to be known as 'The Great Train Robbery'. Though nobody was killed in the process, the driver of the train, Jack Mills, was beaten with a crowbar and suffered from trauma until his death in 1970.

Thirteen of the gang were arrested and convicted on 16th April 1964, whilst the other two were never tried. Just 15 months into his 30-year sentence, Ronnie Biggs (a notorious member of the gang) escaped from Wandsworth Prison by scaling the 30-foot-high fence and jumping into a waiting van. He subsequently fled to Paris, underwent plastic surgery and took on a new identity before moving to Australia and finally Brazil. Since Brazil had no extradition process with Britain Biggs lived openly there for a time whilst the British authorities watched on, powerless.

Having suffered from three strokes, he voluntarily returned to the UK in 2001 in order to receive free medical treatment from the NHS. Though arrested upon arrival, he has spent most of the time since then in hospital. Last month he was rejected for parole because he remained "wholly unrepentent" for his actions. So I am perplexed as to why Labour Justice Secretary Jack Straw has chosen to grant him his freedom on "compassionate grounds" having served less than 10 years of his sentence.

I would not regard myself as tough on crime by any stretch of the imagination, but granting Biggs his freedom is an embarassment. Britain turns away thousands of asylum-seekers who simply want work and live within the system. To turn around and grant freedom to a man who has so fragantly abused it is an afront to all those who work to uphold it and those who will never get to be a part of it. Whilst many of these asylum-seekers will be forced to return to conditions of poverty, disease and war, Ronnie Biggs will spend his 80th birthday as a free man.

ADJB