“Great Train Robber” Ronnie Biggs will live the last part of his life as a free man after Justice Secretary Jack Straw agreed to his release from prison due to ill health.

After taking part in the robbery of a Glasgow-to-London mail train in 1963, Biggs was caught and handed a 30-year sentence the following year, only to escape from prison after just 15 months, eventually fleeing to Brazil where he spent decades as a fugitive.

Now 79, he returned home voluntarily in 2001 and has been in jail ever since.

His previous parole requests had been refused on the grounds he had shown “no remorse for his crimes nor respect for the punishments given to him”, but Straw has relented after considering Biggs’ medical condition.

The case has stirred debate about whether Biggs should be released after serving a third of his sentence.

The 12 “Great Train” robbers got away with 2.6 million pounds and during the robbery train driver Jack Mills was coshed by an unknown gang member, Mills never fully recovered from his injuries and was unable to work again.

Biggs has suffered several strokes, is seriously ill with pneumonia, and his son says he is unable to walk, read, write or speak and cannot eat or drink.

Is it right to release him?

To the surprise of many, not least the newspapers and TV channels that were telling us right up until Wednesday afternoon that his release was imminent, Ronnie Biggs has been refused parole.

Reason — a bad attitude. 

The 79-year-old Great Train Robber may be physically frail but is clearly unwilling to show the required amount of remorse that would get him out of jail and could now spend the rest of his days behind bars.

All the other 11 members of the gang that held up the Glasgow to London night mail, coshed the driver and made off with 2.6 million pounds served just a third of their sentences. Biggs wasn’t even on the train on that notorious night in 1963. He was down on the embankment.

His son Michael says Justice Secretary Jack Straw’s decision is devastating, his lawyer calls the decision to keep Biggs in jail “cruel and unusual punishment.”

Yet the original crime was audacious and huge. Biggs’ cheeky hop over the walls of Wandsworth prison and his subsequent two-fingers to justice from the safety of Brazil clearly rankled with the British establishment. If he had been released, he would probably have become a magnet for old lags all over the country, as far as his physical condition allowed.

Do you think he should have been allowed parole?