He escaped from prison in a helicopter, but France’s most notorious criminal, Redoine Faid, is behind bars again
You thought El Chapo knew how to break out of prison: wait until you hear about Redoine Faid, who broke out first by exploding prison doors, and then again by helicopter.
Welcome to Plain English, episode number 93 for Thursday, October 11, 2018. We are coming up on the one-year anniversary of Plain English, believe it or not. JR and I have been at this for almost a year. About October last year I started drafting some episodes and experimenting with the recording. Those first four or five episodes from October and November didn’t actually come out until December, but it was right around now that we started to produce those first episodes. What a year it has been, right? And thanks to all of you for being such an important part of it.
One feature of the program that has been with us since the beginning is the interactive transcripts. We started with just Spanish, but have since expanded to support Portuguese, then Chinese and French, then Japanese and Italian. If you go to PlainEnglish.com/93, you’ll see the transcript has about 100 words and phrases highlighted in red. Just hover your mouse over those words, or tap on them if you’re on your phone, and you’ll see the definition in your own language. That’s at PlainEnglish.com/93 for this episode’s transcript.
And a quick reminder that if you like podcasts, you might also like audiobooks. And with Audible, you can get a free audiobook if you sign up for a trial membership. You can find that free audiobook offer at PlainEnglish.com/book.
Listen, I have to apologize for my voice again today. I am in day nine of a huge allergy attack, so if I don’t sound as clear as I usually do—well, that’s why.
France’s most wanted behind bars again
He’s photogenic and even a published author, but Redoine Faid is France’s most notorious criminal and he was recaptured last week, after having escaped from jail in a hijacked helicopter in July. He was captured along with his brother and two other men in his home town of Creil, a suburb of Paris, during an early-morning raid last week.
Faid has escaped from jail twice, and twice has been caught just months after his escape. His most recent dramatic jailbreak was considered an embarrassment to the French government. But he is back behind bars this time, and government officials said he would be “in a high-security facility where he will be watched extremely closely.” I bet!
The 46-year-old Faid has lived a life of crime. He was born to Algerian immigrants in the suburbs of Paris and got his start in crime at the age of six, when he stole a shopping cart full of candy from a store. By the time he was 12, he said he knew that stealing would become his profession.
He soon graduated to more serious crimes than just theft. He was a co-leader of a criminal gang that specialized in armed robberies, jewelry theft, and extortion. In the mid-1990s, he was accused of various crimes, including armed robbery and bank theft, but he managed to escape capture by living in Switzerland and Israel. But he was arrested and brought to his first trial in 1998. He served ten years of a thirty-year sentence before being released on parole.
While out on parole, he wrote a book describing how he started on his life of crime, and claiming that he had given up his criminal enterprises. But in reality, he was just getting started. Soon after the book came out, he organized a massive armed robbery of a security van carrying cash—one of his favorite targets. But the robbery went awry, and resulted in a gunfight that killed a police officer. He was sentenced to prison again for his role in that robbery.
That’s when he started planning the first of his two sensational jailbreaks. In April 2013, he broke out of prison after taking five prison guards hostage and using explosives to blast through five prison doors before escaping in a getaway car. He burned his escape car and disappeared. But authorities captured him again just six weeks later, and returned him to prison. They found him in a hotel room trying to obtain forged documents; he had been preparing to go to Israel.
Then came his second escape in July—a sensational escape and an embarrassment to the French government. A group of criminals pretending to be flight students boarded a helicopter with a flight instructor at a nearby flight school. Once in the air, they hijacked the helicopter, taking the instructor hostage, and forced him to fly to the jail where Faid was being held. With Faid aboard, the made the flight instructor fly them to an area in northwest Paris, where Faid and his accomplices fled in an escape car. To prepare for that escape, they had scouted the prison using drones.
As a criminal, Faid has always had a flair for the dramatic—he preferred bank robberies and robberies of armed vehicles carrying cash. He drew his inspiration from Hollywood movies, especially the movie Heat, starring Robert DeNiro. He mimicked the character in that movie by wearing ice-hockey masks to conduct a robbery on an security van. He even caught up with the director of the movie and told him, “You were my technical advisor.”
But Faid was better at committing crimes than he has been at evading capture. Police had been monitoring cell phones of his accomplices and identified a young woman in his home town, Creil, who might have been involved. She told police that she had seen two people in burqas—the traditional, full-body Muslim dress used by women—even though the people wearing them appeared to be men.
That was all police needed to storm the flat where the burqa-wearing men were suspected of being—and they caught Faid and his brother just after 4:00 in the morning last week. Faid spent just three months free before being recaptured.
Wow—caught in his hometown, I would have thought he’d maybe stay away from the place he grew up, but I guess he thought the full-body religious garb would keep him hidden.
By the way, special thanks to Aude in France for suggesting this topic. Aude says she loves the pace and finally found something interesting in English to listen to. Great to have you with us Aude. Also a quick hi to Nahed, who found us on Twitter at PlainEnglishPod. Nahed is from the Gaza Strip, so thanks Nahed for listening and connecting with us on Twitter.
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