Great Train Robber cleared for release

LONDON, June 25 (UPI) -- Ronnie Biggs, imprisoned for his part in Britain's Great Train Robbery, is safe to release because he is too sick for crime, the Parole Board said Thursday.

The board's report, issued eight days before Biggs' scheduled release, said he remains unrepentant and would be likely to commit more crimes if he was physically up to it, the Daily Mail reported. Biggs, 79, and incapacitated from a series of strokes, is to be released from Norwich Prison in eight days if Home Secretary Jack Straw signs off on his parole.

The London-Glasgow mail train was robbed in August 1963 by 15 men who escaped with 2.6 million pounds, at a time when the average cost of a house was 3,160 pounds and a new Ford Cortina, 675 pounds.

Biggs was sentenced to 30 years in prison. He escaped 15 months later and lived in Spain, Australia and Brazil for the next 30 years, returning to Britain voluntarily in 2001.

"Mr. Biggs now describes what happened to the train driver as a 'light tap,'" the report said. "He says he has no regrets about the conspiracy and subsequent events."

But the board also said Biggs, fed through a tube and communicating with an alphabet board, is almost certainly incapable of crime.