Inspired by American and French gangster films, Rédoine Faïd, a French armed robber, pursued a life of crime that required an additional 14 years to his prison sentence. His most dramatic episode occurred when he staged an extraordinary escape from Réau Prison on the outskirts of southern Paris in 2018.
Two brothers, three nephews, and a member of the infamous Corsican underworld were also in trial along with Faïd. The escape was his second successful attempt at degrading the French prison system. In April of 2013, he used smuggled explosives and a gun to free himself from Sequedin prison in the north, only to be caught a month later.
On the first day of July in 2018, three armed accomplices successfully hijacked a helicopter and ordered the pilot to land inside the Réau jail. After deploying smoke bombs to disorient the guards, one of the suspects, identified as Faïd’s elder brother, Rachid, used a disc-grinder to cut through the visiting room doors. At that time, Faïd was receiving a visit from another brother, Brahim. To explosive enthusiasm from the prison’s inmates, the helicopter took off with its new passenger in less than ten minutes.
Faïd managed to evade re-capture for three months. However, the police were able to track him down to his hometown of Creil, north of Paris. There, he was spotted in disguise as a woman in a traditional Muslim burqa. The helicopter, which was instrumental in aiding his escape, was discovered in an abandoned state in Gonesse, north of Paris.
Faïd, portrayed as a “social predator” and a “gifted manipulator” by the police profile, had a rare opportunity to present a glamorized version of his criminal past during the seven-week trial following years of solitary confinement. He constantly made light of his predicament, drawing the court’s attention by cracking jokes and being vocally dismissive about his sentence.
However, the jury was cautioned by the prosecution lawyers to be skeptical of Faïd’s charisma, charm, and personal account of the events. They indicated that his ties with organized crime had been severed due to his egregious craving for recognition. The machines of his grand escape plans were said to be tightly knit within his family circle.
Born to Algerian parents, and being the tenth out of eleven children, Faïd conducted his first bank robbery in 1990. He specialized in attacking armored vans and his first conviction dates back to 1998. Despite professing to follow a criminal code of honor, a policewoman lost her life during a police pursuit following a robbery under his leadership in 2010.
The court found his brother Rachid, 65, guilty of arranging the helicopter flight and awarded him with a ten-year sentence. One of Faïd’s nephews was inside the helicopter during the escape while another was prepped with getaway vehicles. Meanwhile, Faïd’s other brother, Brahim, who denied knowledge of the plot, was handed a one-year suspended sentence.
The trial even crawled into the crevices of an alleged Corsican mafia connection. Faïd was accused of contacting Jacques Mariani, a convicted underworld kingpin, through an intermediary, proposing to handle rival gangsters in exchange for an organized escape. While the claims were denied by both parties, the evidence from the supposed intermediary, who testified incognito and lived under a new identity in a foreign country, pointed otherwise.
The trial met with an unexpected incident when an unforeseen technical error broadcasted the face of the anonymous witness in court and an image was captured and disseminated on social media. Despite this, the culprit remains unidentified.
