French police spot jailbreak gangster ‘in car with explosives’
PONTOISE, France: A French gangster on the run for weeks after a dramatic helicopter jailbreak has narrowly avoided capture by a police patrol and had to abandon a car containing explosives, officials said.
Officers identified Redoine Faid as one of two people who sped away when police tried to carry out a security check on their car north of Paris on Tuesday, a source said. It was the first sighting of 46-year- old Faid since he broke out of prison on July 1, whisked away by accomplices in a hijacked helicopter.
A source close to the investigation said a ‘ major’ search operation was underway. The officers spotted Faid and an accomplice while going to check on a suspicious vehicle waiting near a petrol station in the Paris suburb of Piscop.
As they approached it sped off, sparking a police chase which ended when officers found the car in an underground car park at a shopping centre in nearby Sarcelles. Police found six packages of plastic explosives and fake licence plates in the car boot, while Faid and his accomplice are believed to have fled via a staircase.
“They escaped by a hair’s breadth. It happened in a matter of seconds,” a police source said.
Authorities sealed off the shopping centre while bomb disposal experts dealt with the explosives. Police were examining CCTV footage from the car park and sweeping the vehicle to confirm traces of Faid’s DNA.
Faid, a career criminal, had been serving a 25-year term over a botched 2010 robbery in which a policewoman was killed, though he claims her death was accidental. — AFP