Biggs saga mystifies Brazil

Most Brazilians don't take Ronnie Biggs seriously

By Brazil correspondent Tom Gibbs

Brazilians are finding it hard to work out why there is so much fuss over 71-year-old Ronald Biggs - whose only claim to fame was robbing a train 38 years ago.

Brazil is a country with a murder rate four times higher than the United States - where gun battles between drug gangs and the police are everyday news.

In a country full of robbers - I can't see that one more will hurt too much

Viewer on Brazilian TV

The story of Biggs' planned return to Britain after more than 30 years in Brazil hit the main television news and all the main newspapers.

But it has taken a distant second place to the corruption scandals engulfing the country with top politicians accused of involvement in siphoning off billions of dollars.

Loveable rogue

To many Brazilians the whole Biggs saga is simply another proof of British eccentricity.

"In a country full of robbers - I can't see that one more will hurt too much," was the typical comment of one viewer interviewed on Globo news - the country's main television channel.

Biggs has enjoyed the high life in Brazil

Biggs is portrayed in Brazil as something of a lovable rogue.

His last job here, posing earlier this year with scantily clad, long-legged Brazilian models for an advertising campaign for Brazilian-made underwear, shows how most people do not take him too seriously.

Biggs arrived here in 1970, after being recognised in Australia, where he fled after escaping from a London prison.

He was allowed to stay in 1974, when the British police tried to arrest and extradite him, because his Brazilian girlfriend was by then pregnant.

As father to a Brazilian child he could not be extradited.

Efforts by the British government to get him sent back to Britain finally ended in 1997 when the Brazilian authorities ruled that too many years had passed since the Great Train Robbery.

Little impact

Now that he is trying to leave to return to Britain, a younger generation of Brazilian reporters are covering the story.

Brazilians mingled with the the Fleet Street media scrum outside his house in Rio, quizzing the British journalists on what the story was all about.

Journalists have gathered outside Biggs' Rio residence

There was speculation in the Brazilian papers as to whether Biggs really would leave or whether he was simply continuing to live on his reputation - as he has for the last 30 years by selling interviews to the British media and souvenirs to tourists.

His departure will make little impact on most Brazilians.

The list of correspondents to the Ronnie Biggs fan club - on the Ronnie Biggs official internet site - is almost entirely British with no Brazilians.

And not all Brazilians welcome his presence. One lawyer, Jorge Beja, has fought for years to have Biggs expelled.

He tried to bring a civil suit against the train robber in 1999 when the Ronnie Biggs website was set up.

He accused Biggs of being an apologist for crime and abusing the rules for foreigners living in Brazil.