2023-09-05 11:30:49
France’s “escape king” Rédoine Faïd has had to answer to court since Tuesday for his Hollywood-style prison escape by helicopter. The 51-year-old is accused, together with eleven suspected helpers, of repeatedly escaping from custody and hijacking a helicopter. The trial in the Paris Palace of Justice takes place under increased security precautions.
If convicted, Faïd faces a life sentence. Two of his brothers and three of his nephews are also among the accused. The trial lasts until October 20th.
The escape from the high-security wing in Réau near Paris in July 2018 lasted only about ten minutes: Armed accomplices had forced the pilot of a helicopter to land in the prison yard. Other helpers threw smoke bombs and entered the prison with “police” armbands. They used circular saws to gain access to the visitors’ room, where Faïd was staying with his brother.
Faïd went to the helicopter “relaxed and calm” and flew away, witnesses reported. No shot was fired in the action, no one was injured. At the time the prison yard was not secured by cables against helicopter landings, this was subsequently changed.
After the outbreak, at times up to 3,000 police officers were looking for the fugitive. Three months later, the man convicted of armed robbery was caught in his hometown of Créteil. The repeat offender specialized in robbing money transporters. He had already broken out of a prison in 2013, in which he had taken four guards hostage and blasted his way free.
The Frenchman with Algerian roots likes to compare himself to US gang boss Al Capone and is known for numerous television interviews and his autobiography. In the book, which he wrote in 2010 with the help of a journalist, he celebrated himself as a “new kind of gangster” who found his “vocation” at the age of twelve. Faïd had thus become the dubious idol of many young people in the French suburbs.
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