STRAW BIGGS UP PINOCHET

02-07-2009

Jack Straw, the Justice Secretary who once freed human rights abuser Augusto Pinochet, has seen fit to reject Ronnie Biggs application for parole. Shame on him.

Biggs has already served 10 years of a 30-year stretch for his role in the Great Train Robbery in 1963, and has now served longer than many child abusers and killers.

His condition is pitiful. Even before a recent fall in which he broke his hip, Biggs could barely walk a few steps, and he is fed through a tube.

Communication is only possible by tapping an alphabet board.

According to Straw, Biggs hasn’t shown remorse for his crime – but his son Michael tells a different story.

In an interview with Stirrer editor Adrian Goldberg broadcast on Talksport this morning, Michael insisted that his dad regretted his crime – but could not bring himself to apologise for his time on the run, as this was when he raised a new family. Who could criticise him for that.

Make no mistake. Biggs is a loathsome crim, who jeered at British justice from afar and only returned to this country when his health was failing.

Yet for all that, he has killed no one and can not be considered any kind of the threat to the public – unless, as Michael joked, it involves using his bus pass before 9am.

Straw, who allowed the Chilean dictator Pinochet to evade European justice in 1998 on the grounds of ill health – despite charges of murder and systematic torture – nevertheless insists Biggs must stay in prison.

That’s not justice – it’s persecution.

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