French gangster's spectacular helicopter escape from prison
A notorious prisoner who had been serving a sentence in one of France's highest security prisons for several years has made a spectacular escape. The former prisoner, Redoine Faid, was helped by a number of heavily armed men who created a diversion at the prison entrance until a helicopter landed in the courtyard. The helicopter flew over the nearby Gonesse area.
Faid, 46, has been serving a 25-year sentence for a rape during which a police officer was killed.
But this is not the only escape of this notorious 46-year-old. In 2013, he escaped after taking four hostages as human shields and destroying the prison's protective doors.
He completed his 2013 escape in less than half an hour and managed to get off one of the coasts of northern France.
But this man's story doesn't end there. In 2009, he wrote a book about his experiences and past crime in the Paris suburbs.
This prisoner at the time claimed to have turned his back on crime, but a year later he was involved in a failed robbery for which he was imprisoned in Réau prison in the Seine-et-Marne region.
Faid and his accomplices managed to escape from the prison yard without hurting anyone, French news site Europe 1 reported.
Biography of the French gangster prisoner
Born in 1972, Faid grew up in a notorious suburb of Paris from which he moved into a life of crime./express.
In the 1990s, he led a gang involved in armed robberies and muggings in Paris. In 2001, he was sentenced to 30 years in prison for armed robbery. A court sketch showing French armed robber Redoine Faid on February 27, 2018 during his trial at the Paris Assise court. Image copyright AFP
Faid was involved in a botched armed robbery that resulted in the death of a police officer. French police believe Faid was the mastermind behind a 2010 robbery in which a police officer was killed, but he was only convicted of the crime in April. He had been returned to prison in 2011 for violating parole conditions related to previous convictions.
In 2013, he escaped from the northern French prison of Sequedin, outside Lille, taking four guards hostage, but was captured six weeks later. Last year, he was given 10 years in prison for the 2013 prison break.
