A Daring Jailbreak By A French Robin Hood

Jails are made to be impregnable — nobody gets out unless they’re supposed to.  Unless you’re Redoine Faid.

Faid, 46 years old, is a master escape artist.  He first broke out of a French prison in 2013, but was recaptured and sent to a different, more secure prison six weeks later. Recently, he broke out of that prison as well in a derring-do escapade that involved hijacked helicopters, disguises, gas canisters, and Kalashnikovs.

Faid was doing hard time — 25 years for killing a young policewoman during a botched robbery.  He was sent to prison in 2011, then broke out two years later. Once recaptured, he was transferred to Reau Prison just south of Paris.  Surrounded by shrubs and woods and covered by anti-aircraft netting, it was believed to be one of the most difficult prisons in France from which to escape.  Granted, it wasn’t perched atop cliffs and surrounded by water like Alcatraz, or built with two-foot-thick walls and six guard towers like Attica, but even knowing he’d already escaped from prison, French officials believed it was secure.

They were wrong.  According to news reports, cohorts of Faid used reconnaissance drones to identify weak points in the prison security system and found one — a small patch of ground just beyond the prison wall and undetectable by guards onto which they’d land a helicopter.  They chose to execute the plan on a weekend, knowing security staff would be minimal.

On the morning of the planned breakout, two to four men dressed in black, wearing police arm bands and carrying assault weapons, forced a helicopter instructor to fly them to Reau.  After landing inside the walls, they burst from the helicopter and ran to the meeting point — the visitor area where Faid was meeting with his brother. They then used explosives to blast through doors and let loose gas canisters.  Faid was waiting for them.

The group quickly escaped by the same helicopter as prisoners inside watched and cheered.  No one was hurt in the escape.  Even the helicopter pilot was released without injury.

The French often have a love/hate relationship with the romantic bad guy — the good-looking, working-class underdog who commits his criminal acts for the “right reason.”

After finishing one of his first prison stints, Faid wrote a memoir, “Braqueur,” detailing his rise from poverty to celebrity.  He credited films like “Heat” and “Scarface” for giving him inspiration and called American director Michael Mann his mentor. (He managed to get an endorsement from Mann for the cover of his book.)

He went on a book tour and listed his favorite actors as Robert DeNiro, Steve McQueen, and well-known French prison-escape artist and gangster Jacques Mesrine, whose life was depicted in at 2008 movie “Public Enemy #1,” starring Vincent Cassel and Gerard Depardieu.  In multiple television interviews, Faid, well-spoken and chicly dressed, vowed that he had learned his lesson and would commit crime no more.

But in 2010, during a robbery of an armored truck and a shoot out with local police, Faid killed a 26-year-old police officer who was also a mother.  He was sentenced to 25 years.

Since the breakout in June, French law enforcement have assigned thousands of police to the case. But they know Faid is clever.  During his early criminal life, he managed to evade detection for three years by moving to Switzerland and then Israel, reportedly disguising himself as an Orthodox Jew and learning Hebrew.

French officials believe he may have money stashed away, friends who will hide him, and lots of ideas on places to go and how to disguise himself.

They also believe, however, that he can’t stay away from crime for long and that this, in the end, will be what trips him up.

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Toni Messina has tried over 100 cases and has been practicing criminal law and immigration since 1990. You can follow her on Twitter: @tonitamess.