Rédoine Faïd trial: Top security for French 'jailbreak king'

One of France's most notorious gangsters has gone on trial in Paris amid tight security for breaking out of prison by helicopter five years ago.

Such is Rédoine Faïd's reputation for jailbreaks, French authorities have deployed an elite unit of gendarmes to stop him absconding on his way to and from the court.

Police are said to have warned of a high risk of another escape bid.

Faïd, 51, is accused alongside 11 other people, including two elder brothers.

Court reports said he arrived under heavy police escort, followed by his brother Rachid who is suspected of organising the jailbreak.

At the time of his dramatic escape, he was already serving a sentence for another jailbreak in 2013.

Two accomplices took a helicopter pilot hostage and landed in the courtyard at Réau Prison, south of Paris, on 1 July 2018. They used smoke bombs and angle grinders to barge into a nearby visiting room where Faïd was meeting his brother Brahim.

A prison guard said the two men, dressed as commandoes, were carrying Kalashnikov assault rifles and he and his colleagues were unable to respond to the attack. The Alouette II helicopter flew off and it was all over in a matter of minutes.

Faïd was eventually recaptured three months later in a raid on a flat in his hometown of Creil.

His life as a gangster began with armed robbery and extortion in the crime-ridden suburbs of Paris in the 1990s.

He later wrote a book in which he described how the Hollywood film Heat had influenced his attack on a security van in the 1990s. He became something of a celebrity, appearing on TV to publicise the book.

Months after he was released from one jail sentence in 2010, he was back in custody for breaching the terms of his release. He was later given a lengthy jail term for masterminding a robbery in 2010 in which 26-year-old policewoman Aurélie Fouquet was killed.

In 2013, he took four prison guards hostage and blasted his way out of a jail near Lille in northern France, with a series of explosions to break through five prison doors. All four guards were released.

He went on the run for six weeks before he was back in jail.

For the next seven weeks, Faïd's case is being heard at a maximum security court in the Île de la Cité in Paris. He faces allegations of hijacking an aircraft, as well as repeated escapes as part of an organised gang.

French media have cited a confidential police alert highlighting a "significant risk of an escape attempt".

But Faïd's lawyers have complained that he has been singled out for "inhuman and degrading" solitary confinement at Fleury-Mérogis prison south of Paris. Just because his jailbreak was spectacular, that did not make it dangerous, argued one of his lawyers, Marie Violleau.

"Rédoine Faïd didn't shoot at the guards, he didn't shoot at the watchtowers," she complained. "He climbed into a helicopter and left. It barely lasted seven minutes and that's why the decision has been made to treat him like an animal and cut him off from the entire world."

Among his 11 co-defendants are several members of his family, including two brothers, Rachid and Brahim.

Another of the accused is Jacques Mariani, described as an heir to one of the founders of a notorious organised crime gang on the French island of Corsica.