Biggs interview probe

Press, 28 March 1981, Page 8

Biggs interview probe

NZPA-Reuter Bridgetown

An angry Barbados police commissioner has ordered an inquiry into how a newspaper obtained a behind-bars interview with Ronald Biggs.

Commissioner Avaston Prescod said that he had refused permission for the escaped train robber to be interviewed.

Yet in Bridgetown yesterday the “Nation” newspaper said it had talked to Biggs in his cell.

The paper quoted him as saying he wanted to return to Britain and remarry his first wife Charmean, with whom he fled to Australia after his 1965 jailbreak. The “Nation” said Biggs thought he was unlikely to spend more than five years in jail if returned to Britain.

Mr Prescod said, “I have seen the report in the newspaper. I don’t know if someone had an interview with

Biggs or whether they merely talked to a policeman who is attending him.

“In any case I . have not granted permission for anyone to interview him. Indeed, Biggs said himself he did not want to be interviewed.”

A spokesman for the “Nation” in Bridgetown said that the interview with Biggs had been done “through an in-, termediary at the police headquarters.” “It was an indirect interview. We got someone inside to talk to him.”

. Biggs was not being kept in a cell but being held in a “sergeant’s” room, he said. . Meanwhile the Barbados High Court’s decision on legal efforts to have Biggs set free- could be given today, said Acting Chief Justice Denys Williams yesterday. He reserved judgment on a habeas corpus writ filed by Biggs’ lawyers who sought to block moves by Britain to have him extradited.