Britain's Belmarsh prison rejected the plea of dying Great Train robber Ronnie Biggs to spend his final weeks with his son, the London Daily Mirror reported.
Biggs, 75, ended 35 years on the run with his May 2001 surrender to British authorities in the 1963 heist of $4.6 million from the London-to-Glasgow, Scotland, train.
Biggs escaped from prison and fled to Australia and Brazil, where his son was born 30 years ago.
Biggs, who has suffered heart attacks and strokes, had asked that he be released from the hospital unit of the high-security London prison on compassionate grounds.
However, Belmarsh Gov. Geoffrey Hughes rejected Biggs' plea, the newspaper reported citing leaked documents.
"Mr. Biggs and his family have presumably enjoyed the benefits of being together for 35 years when he should have been serving his sentence," Hughes wrote Biggs' attorney.
Hughes said Biggs had served 5 1/2 years of a 30-year sentence and stood to profit if he were released from prison.
© Copyright 2005 by United Press International
