Biggs glad flight from justice over

Press, Volume CXIV, Issue 33450, 4 February 1974, Page 17

Biggs glad flight from justice over

<-N’ Z-P. A.-Reuter—Copyright) LONDON. February 3. The Great Train Robber, Ronald Biggs, arranged his own arrest in Brazil by tipping off friends in Britain, the “Observer” reported today.

“I am longing for the green fields of England,” Biggs said in Rio de Janeiro yesterday.

Biggs is being held at the Federal police headquarters in Rio de Janeiro and is expected to arrive at Gatwick Airport, London, on board a British Caledonian flight on Tuesday. Biggs, who says he is glad his flight from justice is over, has signed a document in the presence of the British Consul (Mr Henry Neill) asking to be repatriated to Britain. N.Z.P.A.-Reuter reports that detectives in Rio de Janeiro, already flustered byj the four-year stay in their city of one of the world’s most wanted criminals, are irate over the behaviour of two visiting British detec-! tives. The Scotland Yard men appeared to have taken the! limelight from the arrest on

Friday of the man police forces throughout the world have been looking out for since he escaped from a London prison in 1965. GANG IN PRISON Biggs, aged 44, the last free member of a gang of 15 which stole £2.500,000 from a mail train in Britain in 1963 was arrested in a Copacabana hotel room. He was identified by Detective Chief Superintendent Jack Slipper and Detective Sergeant Peter Jones of Scotland Yard, who flew to Rio de Janeiro after receiving a tipoff in London. Facing the same policeman who arrested him in 1964, Biggs spluttered: “Good grief, what are you doing here Jack?” The Brazilian police say that Biggs will have to answer any charges involving crimes committed in Brazil before he could be released to return to Britain with the two Scotland Yard men. So far, no evidence of criminal activity has turned up. CALLING CARD A Brazilian news agency reported today that a simple calling card identifying an interior decorator, Michael John Haynes, as Biggs, led to his arrest. The A.J.B. news agency, quoting unnamed British consular sources, said Federal police sent an undercover agent to befriend Biggs at his apartment to obtain an object with his fingerprints on it. Biggs gave the agent a calling card and the fingerprints were checked against the file of outstanding wanted fugitives on the Interpol list in Rio de Janeiro. The fingerprints matched those of Ronald Biggs and

: Brazilian officials then noti--1 fled Scotland Yard, the • agency said. ■ The agent was sent to Biggs’s home because no-one named Michael John Haynes had either left Britain ,or entered Brazil in a , legal manner. A.J.B. said. . without explaining how suspicion over Michael John Haynes arose in the first , place. Biggs lived in Brazil as an • apparently hard-up carpenter and decorator in a modest . two-room apartment in the; . red-light district of prostitutes and girlie clubs in Rio> i de Janeiro. , There was little sign of . the £93,000 he was believed : to have taken as his share of the robbery loot.