French-Algerian career criminal Redoine Faid, a notorious escape artist, has again broken out of a French prison. This time he used a helicopter to flee detention.
Notorious French armed robber Redoine Faid Image: picture-alliance/dpa/O. Arandel
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46-year-old French-Algerian criminal Redoine Faid escaped from a Paris prison on Sunday by helicopter in a daylight break, authorities said.
"Two men dressed in black, wearing balaclavas and police armbands" showed up at the prison entrance looking for Faid, a union representative at the Reau prison told France's BFMTV. At the same time, a helicopter landed in the prison courtyard, the only part of the complex not covered by anti-helicopter netting. The men used a grinding machine to open the door leading directly to the visiting room, where Faid had been talking with his brother, and fled in the helicopter.
A forensic officer takes a photo of the helicopter abandoned by Redoine Faid after his escapeImage: Getty Images/AFP/G. van der Hasselt
Breakneck breakout
France's Justice Ministry said Redoine Faid's escape only took "a few minutes" and nobody was injured or taken hostage. French prosecutors opened an investigation and police started a manhunt after Faid's escape. "Everything is being done to locate the fugitive," an official at the French interior ministry said.
The pilot of the helicopter used in Sunday's escape was a flight instructor who had been taken hostage while waiting for a student, according to a police source cited by France's AFP news agency. He was found in Garges-les-Gonesse to the north of Paris — about 60 kilometers (37 miles) from the prison — and was questioned by the police before being released in a state of shock.
Forensic officers investigating the site where the helicopter was abandonedImage: Getty Images/AFP/G. van der Hasselt
Tough upbringing
Faid's escape came after an appeals court sentenced him to 25 years for masterminding an armed robbery in 2010, during which a police officer was killed. It is the second time Faid has broken out of prison. In 2013, he took four prison guards hostage and then used dynamite to blast his way out, fleeing in a waiting getaway car, only to be recaptured six weeks later.
Faid grew up in the French capital's tough immigrant suburbs. He has said his life of crime was inspired by movies such as "Scarface" and "Heat." He has co-authored several books about his delinquent youth and his life as a criminal in Paris.
Spectacular prison breaks
Mexican drug baron "Shorty" Guzman is not the first prisoner to want to escape the thick walls, bars, guards and search lights of jail. Here are some of the most spectacular, if not always successful, prison breaks.
Image: Getty Images/New York State Governor's Office/D. McGee
Maximum security in Mexico
In July 2015, Mexican drug kingpin Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman escaped the Altiplano prison through a tunnel under his cell's shower - the second time in 14 years that he managed to flee a maximum-security prison. Guards discovered a deep hole with a ladder that led to a tunnel that in turn led to a building on a hill surrounded by pastures.
Image: Reuters/PGR/Attorney General's Office
Nice try
Not as clever as Guzman: In 2011, the wife of inmate Juan Ramirez Tijerina visited her husband in a Mexican prison, where he was serving a sentence for illegal weapons possession. She brought along a large suitcase she planned to lug him out with again. Prison guards, however, found the young man inside - curled up inside in the fetal position.
Image: picture-alliance/dpa/Sspqr
H-Block 7
In 1983, 38 Irish Republican Army (IRA) inmates broke out of The Maze, considered to be one of Europe's most escape-proof prisons. The Maze was the main prison in Northern Ireland for sentenced republican and loyalist paramilitaries. The inmates used smuggled guns and knives to overpower staff, and hijacked a kitchen van to drive to the main gate, and out of the compound.
Image: picture-alliance/dpa/P. Mcerlane
The Alcatraz escape
With the help of sharpened spoons and an improvised drill, three bank robbers managed to burrow their way out of their cells in Alcatraz high security prison in the San Francisco Bay in 1962. To fool the prison guards at bay, the trio placed dummy heads in their beds. Once they were out, they used an inflatable raft made out of raincoats - and vanished.
Image: imago/Kai Koehler
Daring flight
It sounds like a script for Hollywood blockbuster: Pascal Payet twice used helicopters for his dramatic prison breaks. In 2001, the convicted murderer fled from a prison in a French village using a hijacked helicopter. In 2007, he again used a helicopter for a get-away. Previously, he had helped organize the escape of three captives who had been in jail with him - again using a helicopter.
Image: Getty Images/AFP/B. Horvat
Most wanted fugitive
Awaiting trial, serial killer Theodore Robert Bundy escaped from a county law library by jumping from a window. Re-arrested and sent to jail in Colorado, Bundy lost 30 pounds so he could escape again through a small light fixture hole in the cell ceiling. Bundy spread terror across the US, killing numerous women between January 1974 and 1978, when he was finally recaptured and sentenced to death.
Image: picture-alliance/AP
An Easter escape
Inmate Walter Stürm, imprisoned for stealing offenses, left a smug note in his cell after his get-away from a Swiss prison in 1981. "Off hunting Easter eggs," the note read. Stürm had sawed through the bars on his window, let himself down to the ground to the prison yard and fled to freedom by using a ladder. It was his third prison break.
Image: picture-alliance/dpa
Busting out
In June 2015, two convicted murderers, David Sweat and Richard Matt, broke out of a maximum-security prison in upstate New York, cutting holes in the walls of their adjoining cells, and working their way through a maze of catwalks and pipes to emerge from a manhole. The duo did a practice run the night before the escape. Matt was later killed by police, while Sweat was recaptured, badly injured.
Image: Getty Images/New York State Governor's Office/D. McGee
