Chopper jail break
Smoke bombs used in notorious bank robber’s epic escape
ALMOST 3000 police were last night scouring France for a gangster film-obsessed crime boss following his brazen jailbreak in a hijacked helicopter that landed in the prison yard.
The manhunt for Redoine Faid, 46, comes after two balaclava-clad gunmen used smoke bombs and angle grinders to enter the prison visiting room in Reau, near Paris, where Faid was talking to his brother on Sunday. His brother was later taken into custody.
Unarmed wardens raised the alarm at Sud-Francilien prison and the trio ran to the waiting helicopter and flew off, in a wild operation that lasted just 10 minutes.
The chopper was found by police in nearby Gonesse. The men apparently then used a car that was later found torched in a shopping mall carpark.
Authorities said the helicopter pilot was a flight instructor waiting for a student when he was seized by Faid’s accomplices. He was forced to fly before being later freed.
Police said yesterday “2900 police and gendarmes have been mobilised”.
France’s Justice Minister Nicole Belloubet, who travelled to Reau, labelled it “a spectacular escape”. “It was an extremely well-prepared commando unit that may have used drones to survey the area beforehand,” she said.
Faid, who was serving 25 years for masterminding a failed armed robbery in which a police officer was killed, is notorious in France. He has said his life was inspired by Hollywood gangster films such as 1995’s Heat.
This is the second time he has escaped – in 2013 he broke out of a prison in northern France just 30 minutes after arriving there.
Faid grabbed four guards as human shields and blasted his way free using dynamite to blow off several doors. He was on the run for six weeks.
During the 1990s, he ran an armed robbery and extortion gang in Paris and police nicknamed him “The Author” for two books he cowrote about his delinquent youth. Faid, who has a cult following in the tough immigrant suburbs outside Paris where he grew up, has also made several television appearances.
At a Paris film festival in 2009, Faid approached Michael Mann, director of Heat starring Al Pacino and Robert De Niro, telling him: “You were my technical adviser.”
He wrote that he had watched the film dozens of times to perfect his bank-robbing prowess.
One of his prison supervisors said Faid had never had any disputes with staff “but we must always be wary”.
“In the corner of his mind, he never lost the idea of escaping … he always hid his game,” the supervisor said.