Did Rédoine Faïd try to escape again? Detained at the Vendin-le-Vieil penitentiary center (Pas de Calais), the 52-year-old repeat robber has been in police custody since Tuesday morning, according to information from RTL which was confirmed to Le Parisien. Prison number 1016, who has been in solitary confinement since 2011, is currently being heard by the PJ of Versailles (Yvelines). According to our information, the inmate would be suspected of two escape plans in 2021 and 2023 while he was in Vendin-le-Vieil then at the Fleury-Mérogis penitentiary center (Essonne) awaiting his trial for his spectacular helicopter escape, in 2018, from Réau prison. At the time, Rédoine Faïd was suddenly changed prison without anyone understanding why.
The detainee could be brought before an investigating judge this Friday. Contacted, his lawyer, Me Salomé Cohen, did not wish to comment. In those around the inmate, the greatest caution is recommended, “in view of the relentlessness of the prison administration towards him”.
PODCAST. Robberies, prison, escapes… the infernal spiral of Rédoine Faïd
Rédoine Faïd is known for having managed to escape from prison twice, in 2013 with an explosive and then in 2018 by helicopter. In 2023, he was sentenced to 14 years in prison for the July 2018 escape from Réau prison. He was already serving sentences for robberies, one of which cost the life of a municipal police officer without Rédoine Faïd being found guilty. Since then, the inmate has continued to denounce his conditions of incarceration. On December 10, 2024, Rédoine Faïd began a hunger strike to contest the refusal to lift his solitary confinement in prison, which he considered unjust. His hunger strike ended five days later. For several years, the inmate had been asking for “normal” visiting rooms without a hygiaphone, as well as the family living unit.
On December 2, his request for lifting of the regime was rejected by the sentence enforcement chamber of the Douai Court of Appeal, which found that he was not suffering from unworthy conditions of detention. A judgment which contradicted the decision of a sentencing judge to lift his isolation which was, according to her, “undermining human dignity”. The prosecution then appealed.
“It’s been eleven years since I touched anyone. No detainee has suffered such treatment,” the prisoner told us in November 2023 when we visited him at the Fleury-Mérogis remand center. “I don’t consider myself a hero or a Robin Hood. It's normal to be convicted for an escape. But they put me at the top of the sentence scale. Of all the inmates who have escaped in the last thirty years by helicopter, I take the longest sentence. However, there were no injuries or deaths. I was released at 74 (in 2046)with this conviction, that sends me back to 88 years old. »
If he joked by emphasizing that he was going to “end up in a nursing home”, Rédoine Faïd added with seriousness and incomprehension: “A sentence must have meaning. I was sentenced to thirty-five years (ten years for the escape from Sequedin, twenty-five years for the robbery of Villiers-sur-Marne). What is the point of sentencing me to fifty years? I don't have blood on my hands. What's the message? It's ridiculous. Actually, it's my personality that's the problem. »
