Repeat robber and convicted of murder in 1999, Christophe Khider will be released

Repeat robber Christophe Khider will be released in December after spending nearly 30 years in prison. He will be placed on an electronic bracelet for a period of 18 months.

Repeat robber Christophe Khider, detained since 1995, will be released, BFMTV learned from his lawyer, confirming information from Paris Match. The magistrates of the Douai Court of Appeal gave the green light this Friday, November 29, to an adjustment of the sentence for Christophe Khider. He will be released by the end of December and then placed on an electronic bracelet for a period of 18 months.

Aged 53, Christophe Khider was notably convicted of murder, robbery with violence, concealment, sequestration, concealment and for several escapes and attempted escapes. He was incarcerated in Vendin-le-Vieil prison, in Pas-de-Calais.

“This decision is a relief, it brings hope for everyone, for Christophe Khider first, for society as well. It was high time that he came out and today only aspires to discretion and serenity”, Christophe Khider's lawyer, Me Marie Violleau, told BFMTV.

Christophe Khider was sentenced to 30 years in prison in 1999 for killing, after a robbery, a motorist whose car he was trying to steal to escape. He then made several escape attempts. Including one in 2001, by helicopter: his brother had thrown him a rope from the machine to get him out of the prison, but it turned out to be too short. Equipped with explosives, he also fled from Moulins prison in 2009, before being arrested after 36 hours on the run.

A “sincere” reintegration

In 2013, he told the Journal du Dimanche that he was “hopeless” in the face of the long sentences to which he was sentenced. “For people like me, we have to understand that we are like on the open sea, there is no bottom,” he said.

The Ufap prison union was outraged in August at the leave of absence granted to Christophe Khider, so that he could obtain his driving license in particular. The union saw it as “an arm of honor to the staff and to the entire prison” in view of the profile of the inmate and his multiple escape attempts.

Me Marie Violleau, told TF1-LCI that Ufap “should on the contrary be delighted that the prison system and their work have allowed a man with a heavy sentence” to “request useful permissions and to consider the possibility of effective reintegration. The lawyer assured that her client was in a “sincere and effective” reintegration process.