Repeat robber Rédoine Faïd was sentenced Thursday, October 25 to fourteen years of criminal imprisonment by the Paris Assize Court, for his spectacular escape by helicopter from Réau prison (Seine-et-Marne) in July 2018. The president began the reading of the verdict, dry and technical, without explanation, a little after midnight.
The sentences handed down are, however, much lower than those requested by the prosecution, which notably requested twenty-two years of imprisonment for the 51-year-old robber, and eighteen years for his brother Rachid. The latter had taken a helicopter pilot hostage to force him to land in front of the visiting rooms of Réau prison on July 1, 2018. Rachid Faïd, 65, was sentenced to ten years in prison.
“It is not because we reduce requisitions by eight years which were completely disproportionate that we can be satisfied,” Rédoine Faïd’s lawyer, Me Marie Violleau, reacted to the press. “When we know that what awaits him is isolation, fourteen years, in addition to what he still has to do, it’s not nothing,” she added, specifying that she would wait to see the court’s motivations before ruling on a possible appeal.
Brahim Faïd, 63, who was in the visiting room with his brother Rédoine at the time of the escape, swore during this seven-week trial that he had not been informed of the project. The attorneys general believed him and called for his acquittal. Not the court, which sentenced him to a one-year suspended prison sentence.
Three nephews of the robber, tried for having helped their uncle during the escape or the three-month run that followed, were sentenced to sentences of two, six and eight years in prison. The only point of agreement between the prosecution and the court is the case of Alima A., the “landlady” and friend of one of the nephews, with whom the robber had imposed himself at the end of his run. The court decided to make him benefit from criminal irresponsibility and retained “moral constraint”. She was acquitted.
Another surprise “acquittal” of this verdict, that of all the accused concerned, Rédoine Faïd included, for the “hijacking of the aircraft”. This could not be characterized because there was only the pilot on board, and no passengers, said the president.
Convictions in the “Corsican section” also
Bald head and blue sweater, the robber had entered the box with a smile shortly before the arrival of the court, had kissed his brother Rachid and joked, as usual, with the great Corsican bandit Jacques Mariani.
The end of the sentence of Rédoine Faïd, who was serving convictions in particular for a robbery in 2011 and a previous escape in 2013, was scheduled for 2046. As the confusion of sentences does not exist for escapes, this end of sentence should be extended to 2060.
Despite the late hour and the very long wait – the outcome was expected “from 5 p.m.” – more than a hundred people took their seats in the immense courtroom of the “major trials” of the Palais de justice of Paris to listen to the verdict. Many gendarmes were positioned behind the public.
The professional magistrates and jurors, who left to deliberate Monday morning, had to answer 194 questions on the guilt and responsibility of each of the twelve accused. Rédoine Faïd told the audience about the careful organization of a plan built around an “irrational flaw”: the absence of anti-aircraft lines next to the prison visiting rooms. They have since been installed.
On the morning of July 1, 2018, in “7 minutes 33”, the commando had thrown smoke bombs, forced the doors with a grinder and extracted the robber. The helicopter took off to the applause of the detainees, without a shot being fired, the robber and his defense insisted.
The court was also seized of a small “Corsican aspect”, unrelated to Réau’s escape and which ultimately took up a lot of space at the trial. According to the prosecution, Rédoine Faïd had asked Jacques Mariani in 2017 to help him escape – at the time from Fresnes prison – in exchange for targeted assassinations of members of a rival Corsican clan.
The firm denials of the two big bandits, and the serious doubts about this project from the investigators who came to testify at the bar, did not convince the court, which found them guilty. And sentenced Jacques Mariani, already detained for other crimes, to two years in prison.
The accused who had played the intermediary and appeared hidden behind a screen after having changed his life and his identity for having “discarded” his ex-friend Jacques Mariani did not benefit from the exemption from sentence requested and received two years suspended sentence.
