LE GREAT ESCAPE
French mobster in copter jailbreak
A notorious French gangster serving a 25-year sentence for a cop’s death made a blockbuster-worthy escape from prison when three of his heavily armed accomplices landed a hijacked helicopter in a jail courtyard and whisked him away.
Rédoine Faïd, 46, had been serving time in a suburban Paris jail for masterminding a failed 2010 robbery in which a 26year-old policewoman was killed during a shootout as the thieves fled.
On Sunday morning, three commandos armed with assault rifles forced a pilot they’d taken hostage to land in the visitation courtyard of the Réau prison in Seine-et-Marne — the only place at the facility not equipped with anti-aircraft net- ting, local media reported.
“This was a spectacular escape,” said Justice Minister Nicole Belloubet. “It was an extremely well-prepared commando unit that may have used drones to survey the area beforehand.”
Clad all in black and wearing police armbands and ski masks, two of Faid’s accomplices got off the chopper, while the third held a gun to the pilot’s head.
The men dropped smoke bombs to obscure security cameras and went into the prison to look for their bank robber pal.
They then used a grinding power tool to cut a door leading to a visitation room, where Faïd was meeting with his brother, grabbed him and took off, according to Martial Delabroye, a representative for the prison guards union.
The French-Algerian gangster’s brother was taken into custody and questioned, a judicial source told the AFP.
The helicopter, a beige Alouette II, was found abandoned and burned hours later north of Paris, as was a black car the criminals had jumped into when they left the chopper behind.
The pilot, who was kidnapped from a local flying club, was released by his captors and police found him in Gonesse, the same town the aircraft was discovered in. He was taken to a local hospital and treated for shock.
No one was injured in the daring escape mission that took only “a few minutes,” according to France’s Justice Ministry.
Unarmed guards at the prison said they were helpless.
“Everything is being done to locate the fugitive,” an official at the interior ministry told Reuters as a manhunt was launched.
Authorities said that some 2,900 law-enforcement officers were mobilized to look for Faïd, who seemed to have pulled off his second prison break.
In April 2013, he broke out of France’s Lille-Sequedin prison by taking four guards hostage and using explosives hidden in tissue packets to blast his way through five doors. He was nabbed six weeks later.
Prior to the 2010 botched robbery that resulted in the death of policewoman Aurélie Fouquet, Faïd had served 10 years behind bars for a series of robberies. He was released on parole in 2009 after convincing authorities that he’d changed, and published a memoir that year on growing up in a crimeridden Paris suburb.