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Sequestered in a glass box in a heavily guarded Paris courtroom, Rédoine Faïd talked animatedly with his lawyers to plot strategy during his trial for an infamous prison break in which he escaped in a helicopter.
The scene offered a glimpse of the determination and meticulousness that probably helped the 51-year-old career criminal, who specialised in hold-ups of banks and armoured cars but is best known for his prison breakouts.
The helicopter escape in 2018 made him the most wanted man in France during three months on the run, and not for the first time — Faïd had freed himself from another prison five years earlier, armed only with a handgun and some homemade explosives.
In a sign of his notoriety, about a hundred journalists were on hand for Faïd’s first day of testimony in which he spoke confidently for more than four hours, displaying regret, defiance and flashes of humour that prompted a rebuke from the judge.
“My addiction to liberty has consumed me,” Faïd said in a clear voice as he apologised for dragging loved ones into criminality. “It has caused major damage in my family, and I take responsibility for it all from A to Z.” Two of his brothers and three nephews stand accused of helping in the escape, along with six other defendants.
The jailbreaks put Faïd in the pantheon of flamboyant French criminals such as bank robbers Jacques Mesrine and Albert Spaggiari, who captured the public imagination despite committing violent acts in the 1960s and 1970s.
Prison escapes are uncommon but not rare: this week in London a terror suspect went on the run by clinging on to the underside of a van, and a prisoner used Spider-Man footwork to climb out of a jail yard in Pennsylvania.
Faïd stands out for having cultivated his fame by co-writing a memoir in 2010 titled Braqueur [Robber], in which he described his rise from a small-time criminal in a rough neighbourhood to the top ranks of so-called grand banditisme in France. The avowed movie buff, who took inspiration for his hold-ups from films such as Heat and Reservoir Dogs, hoped the book would open doors in cinema.
A smooth talker with a bald pate and dark eyes, Faïd vowed that his criminal days were behind him when he went on talk shows to promote the book: “My demons are not asleep, they are completely dead.”
Only a few months later he was involved in planning a botched robbery of an armoured car that led to the death of a 26-year-old policewoman in a shootout. He was convicted of conspiracy but always maintained his innocence in the case, pointing to his credo of never injuring or killing anyone during hold-ups.
To counter the mythology of the escape artist, prosecutors on Friday pressed him to recognise the extreme violence of his acts.
“I have no blood on my hands,” he exclaimed. But he admitted that threatening people with guns, even if no shots were fired, was serious. “I feel bitter regret. I am no Snow White.”
Faïd will probably end his days in prison: he is already serving more than 50 years for several robberies and the first prison escape, and if he is convicted in the current case, he faces a further life sentence. Authorities have imposed solitary confinement on Faïd for the past decade.
“He is paying for having humiliated the state, not once but twice,” said Jérôme Pierrat, a veteran crime journalist who co-wrote Faïd’s memoir and has remained close with him. “His only aim in the current trial is to try to get softer detention conditions.”
The youngest in a large family of 10 siblings, Faïd was raised by Algerian immigrant parents in a working-class housing project in Creil, an hour north of Paris. In his telling, his first theft was at age 6 when he walked out of a supermarket “with a caddie full of toys and candy”, adding: “By age 12, I knew I would make robbery my vocation.”
At the age of 18, when he robbed his first bank by taking the director’s family hostage, he and his accomplices wore masks of French politicians — a nod to the surfer criminals in the 1991 movie Point Break.
He honed his skills and graduated to holding up armoured cars, the highest challenge for French criminals, said Pierrat. “The public fascination with him started with the book, but also came from how he resembles the fantasy version of a gangster — attractive, smart, and charming, kind of like George Clooney in Ocean’s 11.”
The second jailbreak was a family affair. His brother Rachid, then a 60-year-old father and social worker with little criminal past, allegedly led the three-person gang that broke Rédoine out. At the trial, Rachid justified his actions by saying prison was “a death trap” for his brother, so “I told myself I had to do what I had to do.”
Prosecutors said the gang booked a helicopter with a pilot at a nearby airfield and then hijacked it to force the pilot at gunpoint to land in the prison courtyard. Rachid and others allegedly cut through several metal doors with a power saw and liberated Faïd.
It all took about 10 minutes from landing to take-off.
In the courtroom, the judges probed Faïd on what drove him first to steal and then to flee: was it the money, the adrenaline, the glory? For once, Faïd appeared at a loss for words.
“It was an infernal spiral,” he said slowly. “In the concrete sarcophagus of my cell, I felt I could not do any differently. The ennui provoked the escape.”
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