'I want to come home'

Biggs claims his health is failing after three strokes

Train robber Ronnie Biggs used an e-mail to Scotland Yard to announce his plan to end 30 years of exile in Brazil.

Biggs, 71, e-mailed from his Rio de Janeiro home, asking for a passport and offering to give himself up at Heathrow Airport.

I am prepared to hand myself over to the authorities when I land in the UK.

Ronnie Biggs

In a statement issued through family friend, Kevin Crace, he said: "I fully intend to go back to the United Kingdom at the earliest opportunity.

He added: "I have been in contact with the Metropolitan Police and am prepared to hand myself over to the authorities when I land in the UK."

A Scotland Yard spokesman said a "page-long" e-mail from someone claiming to be Biggs had been received.

Biggs revealed his wish to return to the UK in The Sun

Biggs escaped from Wandsworth Prison in 1965 after serving 15 months of a 30-year sentence for his part in the £2.6m Great Train Robbery.

The 71-year-old claims he is in failing health after recently suffering his third stroke.

In an interview, he told The Sun newspaper his last wish was to "walk into a Margate pub as an Englishman and buy a pint of bitter."

'Playboy existence'

Nigel Sangster QC, who also represented Biggs at an extradition hearing, initially said his firm had not been contacted by Biggs.

But he added: "If we are instructed we will be looking at his mental and physical state, and pursuing every avenue open to us to allow his early release."

Fellow train robber Roger Cordrey, 79, warned Biggs not to come home, but called on the government to show mercy.

He said: "Unless he has been told he has some terminal disease he is mad to come back.

Biggs has enjoyed the high life in Brazil

"I think the government will bang him up. There are people out there who feel they must have their last ounce of flesh, and Ronnie has been an embarrassment for the Home Office.

"The establishment in this country cannot start showing mercy unless someone is dying."

But shadow home secretary Ann Widdecombe has said Biggs should be returned to prison.

She told BBC Radio 4's Today programme: "It is not an advertisement for the rule of law that somebody can be given a very hefty sentence, escape pretty early, live a playboy existence at a great distance, laugh at British law and then come back and say 'Now I'm here it's not worth pursuing me, is it?'"

The carriages of the train that were robbed

Biggs was part of a gang that escaped with a then record haul after holding up a Glasgow to London night train in 1963.

Driver Jack Mills was coshed as the gang boarded the train near Cheddington in Buckinghamshire. He never fully recovered from the attack and died in 1970.

After his escape, Biggs eventually ended up in Rio de Janeiro in 1970, but could not be extradited under Brazilian law after fathering a child with a local woman.