Multi-recidivist robber, Redoine Faïd is on trial from September 5 to October 20 in Paris for his surprising helicopter escape from Réau prison (Seine-et-Marne) in 2018. The native of Creil (Oise) had been arrested barely a hundred days later in a hideout in the Picardy town.
The 50-year-old robber will be tried from September 5 for his spectacular helicopter escape from Réau prison, in Seine-et-Marne, in 2018. Pending his trial, he was placed in the month of July to solitary confinement in the prison of Condé-sur-Sarthe as a particularly guarded prisoner.
Redoine Faïd was born in Creil on May 10, 1972 in the Guynemer estate, on the south-eastern edge of the city. The penultimate of a large family from Algeria, he has eight brothers and three sisters. He committed his first robbery at the age of 18, when he was in his final year at Jean-Rostand high school in Chantilly.
Coming from a large family, Redoine Faïd spent his youth in the Guynemer city of Creil in the Oise. • © Valentin Pasquier / FTV
In the 1990s, he robbed then, inspired in particular by the films Heat or Point Breakspecializes in the robbery of armored vans, like that of Villepinte (Seine-Saint-Denis) in 1997 where his gang, decked out in hockey masks, stole more than €410,000.
He was found in 1998 and sentenced to 18 years in prison for aggravated violence and forcible confinement. He was released on parole in 2009 and published an autobiography the following year. For his promotion, he goes around the TV sets, entrusting to stop his activity as a robber.
But the old demons of Creillois seem very much alive. A personality who has become a media personality, Redoine Faïd is suspected of having participated on May 20, 2010 in the failed attack on a convoy of funds which cost the life of a municipal police officer in Villiers-sur-Marne (Val-de-Marne), Aurelie Fouquet. The 26-year-old officer was shot and killed while on duty trying to stop the assault along with one of her injured colleagues.
In 2010, Redoine Faïd is suspected of having participated in the failed attack on a convoy of funds which cost the life of a municipal police officer. • © Valentin Pasquier / FTV
Arrested on June 28, 2011, Redoine Faïd was detained in Lille-Sequedin prison (Nord).
April 13, 2013, shortly after eight o’clock in the morning. As he is taken from his Lille-Sequedin cell, Redoine Faïd takes four prison officers hostage with a weapon hidden in his laundry bag. Then, thanks to explosives hidden in the same place, he blew up one of the doors leading to the outside of the prison.
Redoine Faïd was arrested on May 29, 2013 after only six weeks on the run, in a hotel in Pontault-Combault (Seine-et-Marne). He is confused by the geolocation of the mobile phone of the supplier of false papers that he had canvassed to leave French territory.
Redoine Faïd took four prison officers hostage during his escape from Lille-Sequedin prison on April 13, 2013. • © Valentin Pasquier / FTV
A long legal period then opens for Redoine Faïd. On April 13, 2016, the robber was sentenced to 18 years’ imprisonment for the murderous robbery of 2010, a sentence increased to 25 years on appeal in April 2018. His brother Fayçal, who shot the policewoman, was sentenced to 20 years.
For the flight from Lille-Sequedin and the hostage-taking of its agents, the Northern Assize Court imposed a ten-year prison sentence on him in March 2017. He appealed and then abandoned the process at the end of 2018.
Finally, in October 2017, Redoine Faïd was sentenced to 18 years’ imprisonment in Douai by the North Assize Court for the robbery of an armored van in 2011 thanks to the installation of a roadblock on a national road in Roclincourt (Pas-de-Calais) and the use of weapons of war. The robber appeals. He was then detained in the Réau penitentiary center (Seine-et-Marne).
On July 1, 2018 at 11:15 a.m., a helicopter landed in the main courtyard of the Réau penitentiary center. Three heavily armed people come out and take less than ten minutes to exfiltrate Redoine Faïd, who was then in the visiting room.
“They disked all the doors to access the parlorsummed up a prison official at the time. Once in the visiting room, they discos the door of the cubicle where Redoine Faïd was talking with a member of his family. They took him in and took him straight out.“On the images captured by the telephone of a detainee, we see the helicopter leaving the prison. At the controls, a pilot taken hostage by Faïd’s accomplices whom the investigators will find unharmed.
On July 1, 2018, Redoine Faïd escaped from the Réau prison by helicopter thanks to the complicity of three heavily armed people. • © Valentin Pasquier / FTV
“The commando probably spotted the place using drones, (…) which led to this spectacular escape, by allowing a helicopter to land in the only courtyard of the prison which was not covered by safety nets“, explained at the time the Minister of Justice Nicole Belloubet.
The criminals abandoned the partially burned helicopter in Gonesse (Val-d’Oise), about fifty kilometers from Réau, then continued their escape in a vehicle which they left in Aulnay-sous-Bois (Seine-Saint -Denis). They finally borrow a last vehicle, a white utility, to join the A1 and go up to Hauts-de-France. Redoine Faïd was spotted by the police in Sarcelles (Val-d’Oise) on July 24, but managed to faint.
To find France’s most wanted fugitive, investigators are focusing on his loved ones and family. During the summer of 2018, impressive searches were carried out at their homes in Méru, Compiègne, Villers-Saint-Paul and Creil, in order to find out if Redoine Faïd had recently come into contact with them.
The king of beauty’s run ends on October 3, 2018 around 4:20 a.m. Redoine Faïd was arrested without resistance in an apartment located on the 4th floor of a building in the Guynemer de Creil housing estate, surrounded by nearly 120 police officers. Rachid – one of his brothers – two nephews and the woman who lodged them are also arrested. Two firearms are taken from the scene.
On October 3, 2018, Redoine Faïd was arrested in Creil in an apartment in the Guynemer housing estate where he grew up. • © Valentin Pasquier / FTV
This suspicious young woman had been spotted by investigators a few days before Redoine Faïd’s arrest.
“[Ils] realized that this young woman was taking aboard her vehicle a person dressed in a burqa, whose appearance could suggest that it could be a man”
François Molins, public prosecutor of Paris
Press conference of October 3, 2018
It turned out that Redoine Faïd used this integral veil to be able to move around his hideout. The landlady’s telephone line is tapped, which confirms the intuition of the police officers.
“On October 2, around 10:30 p.m., the investigators saw the individual dressed in a burka get out of the vehicle and enter the young woman’s home on rue Carpeaux in Creil, adds the magistrate. Shortly after, a second individual, also wearing a burqa, also returned to this building. It is in this context that the operations were accelerated and that the investigators arrested Redoine Faïd around 4:20 am.“
In addition to the five people mentioned above, the police proceeded the same morning to the simultaneous arrest of a third nephew and two other individuals in the south of the Oise. To prevent a new escape, Redoine Faïd is placed in an isolation unit at the Vendin-le-Vieil prison (Pas-de-Calais).
Redoine Faïd is due to appear at the end of February 2020 in Saint-Omer for his appeal trial in the case of the robbery of the armored van in Pas-de-Calais. But the robber began a hunger strike to complain about his conditions of detention, in particular the fact that he was not detained during his trial at the Longuenesse prison, located close to the Audomarois court.
At the end of this hearing, where he refused to be taken out of his cell, the Creillois was sentenced on March 13, 2020 to 28 years in prison, 10 years longer than at first instance. In February 2022, he was transferred to the prison of Fleury-Mérogis (Essonne), then in May 2023 to that of Condé-sur-Sarthe (Orne).
From September 5, 2023, Redoine Faïd is on trial in Paris with eleven people, including two of his brothers, three nephews and the young woman who hosted him during his run. The latter initially benefited from a dismissal, because the examining magistrates considered that she had undergone the accommodation of Redoine Faïd; this was finally overturned by the investigating chamber of the court of appeal, seized by the prosecution and several defendants contesting their appearance. The hearing is expected to last until October 20.
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