In Hollywood-Style Jailbreak, French Convict Flees Prison

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/01/world/europe/france-jailbreak-redoine-faid.html

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PARIS — A jailbreak of the kind usually dreamed up for Hollywood screenplays unfolded in real life on Sunday in France when a helicopter landed in a prison courtyard and masked men leaped out and spirited away a well-known criminal.

A manhunt was still underway on Sunday evening for the inmate, Rédoine Faïd, 46, who was serving 25 years for his part in a 2010 robbery that resulted in the death of a young police officer.

Justice Minister Nicole Belloubet said the commando team that rescued Mr. Faïd from the Réau Prison on the outskirts of Paris had been “very well prepared and without a doubt had scoped out the place using drones.” She added, in comments broadcast by the French television station BFMTV, that the staff had spotted drones over the prison several months ago.

It was not the first time Mr. Faïd had escaped from prison.

In 2013, he took four prison guards hostage while using plastic explosives to blast his way through five sets of prison doors, then meeting an accomplice who was waiting in a car. Mr. Faïd was recaptured several weeks later.

On this occasion, Mr. Faïd was in the prison visitors’ room when three armed men clad in black landed a small helicopter in the compound’s central courtyard, jumped out and set off smoke bombs, according to Martial Delabroye, an official at a local prison workers’ union.

Two of the men, wearing balaclavas and police armbands, ran inside, used a grinding machine to cut through the doors to the visiting area and, with Mr. Faïd in tow, raced back to the helicopter, Mr. Delabroye said.

They flew to the northeastern side of Paris — about 25 miles from the prison — before landing in the suburb of Gonesse, in a neighborhood with warehouses, small office buildings and roadways surrounded by tall leafy bushes — typically a quiet area on a Sunday morning.

Ms. Belloubet, who called the jailbreak “completely out of the ordinary,” said the team had carried it out by taking a flight instructor hostage and forcing him to take them to the prison. She said drone surveillance might have helped them avoid other courtyards that were covered with netting; they chose the only courtyard where they could have landed.

After landing at Gonesse, the group got into a car and drove away, later dumping that vehicle in the parking lot of a shopping mall in another Paris suburb, according to French news reports.

Mr. Faïd, who grew up in the poor outskirts of Paris, was known in the 1990s for being part of a ring of thieves who specialized in robbing armored vans used to transport money and other valuables. He eluded capture for several years but was eventually arrested and tried. He served 10 years of a 20-year sentence before being released on good behavior, according to his publisher, La Manufacture.

On emerging from prison then, he wrote an autobiography, “Gangster: From the Slums to Big Crime.” The book’s blurb on the French Amazon website describes him as being a long way from the petty thieves of the slums and instead one of the “criminal aristocracy.” It also notes that although he was involved in a number of armed robberies, he had never hurt anyone.

At the time, and during subsequent media appearances, Mr. Faïd said he had given up a life of crime.

But within a year he was involved with another gang. In the course of a robbery that he was accused of planning, a high-speed chase ensued, followed by a shootout with the police, resulting in the death of an officer. Although Mr. Faïd contended that he had nothing to do with her death, he was sentenced to 25 years in prison.