Biggs now a pawn

Press, Volume CXIV, Issue 33453, 7 February 1974, Page 13

Biggs now a pawn

<X.:. F.. 4 Iteulrr—cepKHohti RIO DE JANEIRO, Februan 5. Ihe train robber. Ronald Bings, might wriggle out of being sent baek to England to finish his 30-\ear sentence by invoking an obscure Brazilian law. lawyers said today. Biggs, now being held as a political pawn while Britain and Brazil haggle over the terms of a bilateral extradition treaty, seem to have shown no interest so far ii?. lighting any eventual move to return him to Britain.

But the British Government has been unwilling to sign an extradition treaty with Brazil. If the two countries fail to reach agreement. Biggs could invoke an old Brazilian statute that says a man cannot be extradited to a country where he has been given a bigger sentence than would normally be handed out for a similar offence in Brazil.

10 yeart* ! According to the lawyers, the 44-year-old train robber i would not have received more than 10 years in prison jin Brazil for a robbery in I which no-one was killed. [ Biggs served only 14 months of his sentence for his part in the £2,600.000 'sterling Great Train Robbery in 1963 before he escaped from London's WandsI worth gaol in 1965. He had been on the run i until he was arrested tn Rio Ide Janeiro last week by two Scotland Yard detectives. The two detectives flew home empty-handed yesterday after the Brazilians, angered by the tactics of Scotland Yard and British diplomats to whisk the fugitive away, slapped a 90-day preventive detention order on i Biggs and gave Britain 60 days to apply for his extradition. Informed sources said yesterday that any petition from London would not be heeded by Brazil unless Britain

t,agreed to a bilateral extrad11 tion treaty. 1 An official Brazilian Note s said that the Federal • Supreme Court would rule on I the case after Ftritain lodged I I an extraditk'tn petition 1 "based on the principle ol 'I reciprocity" — meaning 1 i that Brazilian’ criminals 1 caught in Britain would be ' shipped home. I Lawyers say that Biggs 'could have another loophole Iby signing a diwunient say ding that he is the father of r an unborn Brazilian child - 1 his girl friend. Rainiunda. i says that she is pregnant and ijshe may also ask a court to let him stay in Brazil. I A Government spokesman r-has said that a pregnancy ) claim would be c rmstdered I" ..the Supreme Coin. It would . not affect an extradition pro . cess but it might sway a deportation order. i Him* iiuoiitlie i The diplomatip tug-of-war and extradition procedures ■ are expected to lake at least , three months. Until a decision bis reached. Biggst'will be held i in the Federal jpol in Bras--1 ilia. (•ne of his neighbours will ijbe Ferdinand Lej jros. the mil I lionaire playboy wanted In I France for the al'leged forgei v I of famous paintings. Biggs's other neighbours i will include members of a I dismantled Mat, a drug-ring i waiting to be ex tradited. Biggs could * veil become another pennane nt inmate at the gaol, where such men as Armand Alex Cl hi pentier, of iFrance, wanted for murder, waited five years for extradition. Charpentier hi <1 only been sentenced to JO years by a French court. H t fought Ins extradition by saying that he was the father o 1 a Brazilian (child but was fii tally handed over to France i i November, 11972, after the mother (changed her let itimony and I said that he «us not the father. [ Inspector Carlos Alberto -(Garcia of the Federal Police, ■'said today that Biggs was I now out of his jurisdiction ■land in the hands of the JusLtice Minister. Th ft Briton is I still at the top s ecurity gaol I 'of the Social a nd Political -IPolice while aw; feting trans. > fer to Brasilia.