Convict flees prison in Hollywood style
PARIS — A jailbreak of the kind usually dreamed up for Hollywood screenplays unfolded in real life Sunday in France when a helicopter landed in a prison courtyard and masked men leapt out and spirited away a well-known criminal.
A manhunt was still underway 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 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 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, before meeting an accomplice who was waiting in a car. Faïd was recaptured several weeks later.
On this occasion, Faïd was in the prison visitors’ room when three armed men clad in black landed a small helicopter in the 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 Faïd in tow, raced back to the helicopter, 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 roadways surrounded by tall leafy bushes.
Belloubet said the three-person commando team had carried it out by taking a flight instructor hostage and forcing him to take them to the prison.
After landing, 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.