‘Postcard bandit' prison escapee asks WA court for freedom

Sydney Morning Herald

4 days ago

A notorious bank robber and fugitive dubbed the 'Postcard Bandit', who was jailed after escaping from one of the nation's toughest prisons, is making another bid for freedom.
Brenden James Abbott is seeking to have his incarceration declared unlawful and is also suing the West Australian government for wrongful imprisonment in the state's Supreme Court.
The 63-year-old, who escaped from Fremantle Prison in 1989, claims that sentencing laws introduced in November 1996 do not apply to him and that his WA custodial sentence lapsed while he was in custody in Queensland.
He is also seeking to challenge the constitutional validity of the laws, which require an inmate returned to prison after an escape to serve an additional imprisonment equal to one third of the time they were at large, on top of the time they had yet to serve when escaping.
Abbott's son James says his father has been behind bars for too long.
'If you do the crime, you do the time,' he said outside court on Tuesday.
'But the amount of time that dad has done for what he's done is more than enough.
'He's paid his debt to society and he deserves to spend time with his family.'
Abbott is a maximum security inmate at Perth's Casuarina Prison, where he is serving a 14-year sentence for bank robbery, a prison riot and escaping from Fremantle Prison in 1989.