REPORTS suggest that Wanstead MP Harry Cohen may soon get his wish to see great train robber Ronnie Biggs set free. (From East London and West Essex Guardian Series)

REPORTS suggest that Wanstead MP Harry Cohen may soon get his wish to see great train robber Ronnie Biggs set free.

12:11pm Friday 31st July 2009 in

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REPORTS suggest that Wanstead MP Harry Cohen may soon get his wish to see great train robber Ronnie Biggs set free.

Biggs’ controversial lawyer Giovanni Di Stefano is reporting on his website that he has been granted permission by the High Court to challenge the Government’s decision to refuse parole.

Mr Cohen, who is stepping down at the next election, has long championed the cause of ailing Biggs – who is currently in hospital with pneumonia – believing it ‘inhumane’ to allow the 80-year-old to die in prison.

In a recent parliamentary debate Mr Cohen said it was an ‘unreasonable and cruel decision’ not to release Biggs in line with parole board recommendations.

Justice Secretary Jack Straw refused to allow the Lambeth-born criminal his freedom as he was ‘wholly unrepentant of his crimes’.

Mr Cohen said: “To say that Mr Biggs is unrepentant is plain wrong, and to say that he could benefit from crime is ludicrous.

“This is an ill man, who can hardly walk; I shall say a little about his ill health. He is not going on a speaking tour. He cannot earn from his crime - that would be against the law.

“It is the media who are imposing themselves on him, not Ron imposing himself on them, and that will happen anyway when he is released, unless he dies in prison, as some officials in the Home Office seem to want. That is unreasonable.”

Biggs and his gang stole £2.6million from a mail train in 1963. After being convicted, he escaped from HM Prison Wandsworth by scaling the wall with a rope ladder.

He fled to Paris, where he acquired new identity papers and underwent plastic surgery before spending many years on the run in Brazil.