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By Amy B Wang and Avi Selk | Washington Post
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Thousands of police have searched across France to find a convict who escaped on Sunday in a raid. 39, commando type helicopter. how the hug, surprisingly coordinated and surprisingly daring, came together – probably after months of high-tech spying work and secret plans.
Redon Faid, a 46-year-old gangster and career criminal, was serving a 25-year prison sentence. armed robbery and murder at the South Francilian Penitentiary Center. For obvious reasons, little is publicly disclosed about the security measures in place at the prison, about 25 miles southeast of Paris to Reau.
According to an old brochure, the institution houses 500 men and women prisoners on an "exceptional" campus with meadows, embankments, canals and nearly 10,000 plants, shrubs and Despite the equipment, the prison was supposed to be secure even for a man like Faïd, whose records of robberies, hostages and violence date back to the 1990s, and who escaped once before in 2013.
So South The exceptional landscape of Francilien was covered by what the Associated Press called "anti-helicopter net" – the entire grounds, with the exception of a large, small yard used.
That was the weakest link in the design of the prison around which Faid was an accomplice. the outside began to plot.
"Someone spotted this possible outcome, and this could have been done using drones," Justice Minister Nicole Belloubet told the press, according to the Guardian. She stated that several of these machines were spotted several months ago
. consenting accomplices, according to the French authorities. None of them knew how to fly a helicopter, apparently – so Sunday morning, the men kidnapped a pilot while waiting for a flight lesson, according to the Guardian.
They forced the pilot under the threat of a weapon to take them to jail in an Aerospatiale Alouette II, a light utility chopper. It was a hot morning, and the small, bright white helicopter could look almost cheerful as it flew over the thick foliage of South Francilien and landed in the yard shortly before noon
Then two of the gunmen jumped out of the ship. . They now wore masks, according to Reuters. They also wore hoods, "police" armbands and Kalashnikov rifles, according to the Guardian.
"It was an extremely well prepared commando unit," Belloubet told reporters. And he had all the tools, the weapons and the expertise to carry out a specific attack on the internal security of the prison.
Faïd was in the visiting room talking to his brother at that time, writes the Guardian. The gunmen in the yard reportedly dispersed gas bombs and smoke bombs and used an electric grinder to get through the door of the visiting room.
The two gunmen then escorted Faid to the helicopter, where the third was still guarding. the pilot
The escape of Faid caused a massive human hunt across Greater Paris, which now involves at least 2,900 French security forces and checkpoints along the Belgian border , according to the Guardian. The French National Police said Sunday that she had mobilized her forces and urged people to inform the authorities of any relevant information.
Hours after the escape, the helicopter was found abandoned and burned in a field in Gonesse, a suburb just northeast of
The kidnapped pilot had been released unharmed, reports Associated Press.
Faïd reportedly made the next stage of escape into a land vehicle, which was later found abandoned in Aulnay-sous-Bois, another suburb of Paris, reported the BBC.
The convicted brother's brother was arrested and interrogated, Reuters reported. Tuesday morning, he was the only person related to the operation known in custody.
Sunday's escape was not the first time Faid had achieved a dramatic prison break. In 2013, he managed to escape from a Lille prison, taking four guards hostage and then detonating explosives hidden in a tissue box to blow on the prison gates, reported local media. He was recaptured six weeks later at a hotel in the Paris suburbs – but not before briefly claiming the title of "the number one public enemy" of France, writes The Independent
. , Faid was inspired by the crime bosses and arrangements described in old Hollywood movies:
Young delinquent in a troubled suburb north of Paris, Faid took his inspiration, and modus operandi, movies American gangster. "Take away the cinema [lessons taught by] and you would have 50% less crime," he told Michael Mann, the director of Heat (1995), his favorite movie.
During a raid on a safety truck in 1997, Faïd and his associates wore ice hockey masks as Heat's hero-villains. Three years ago, when he was considering dropping crime for a film career, he boasted, "I see everything in CinemaScope." The other hero of Faid is Jacques Mesrine, the criminal French most famous modern day. Mesrine also turned his life into a kind of film writing, with interviews and newspaper letters, before dying in a police ambush in the northern suburbs of Paris in 1979.
Faïd has a locker violent justice dating back at least the 1990s, when it organized the theft of banks, stores and armored vehicles. He has taken hostages of families, couples and a police officer, according to the Telegraph.
He spent years as an international fugitive before his capture and a decade in prison, then wrote an autobiography after his parole in 2009. In this document, he claimed to have been inspired by the American gangster film " Scarface, "writes the Telegraph, but he claimed that his life of crime was behind him.
The same year that the book came out, the Telegraph wrote, Faïd was suspected of a botched robbery in which a policeman was killed in a shootout. He was sentenced to eight years in prison in 2011 – interrupted by the breakthrough of 2013.
T.J. Ortenzi contributed to this report, which was updated with new information.
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