Image copyright IBO/SIPA/REX/Shutterstock Image caption This is the second prison break pulled off by Redoine Faid (pictured in 2010)

A notorious gangster is on the run after escaping by helicopter from a prison in the Paris region.

Redoine Faid was helped by three heavily-armed men with assault rifles.

Two gunmen in balaclavas used smoke bombs and angle-grinders to break into the visitors' room where Faid was talking to his brother.

A third man in the prison courtyard guarded the helicopter and its pilot - a flying instructor whom the men had taken hostage.

The helicopter flew to the nearby Gonesse area, where it was found by local police.

Faid, 46, has been serving a 25-year sentence for a failed robbery during which a police officer was killed.

This is the armed robber's second prison break: in 2013, he escaped after seizing four guards as human shields and blowing several doors off with dynamite.

He staged that escape less than half an hour after arriving at a prison in northern France, and spent six weeks on the run.

Image copyright EPA Image caption The escape helicopter was found in Gonesse, north of Paris

Image copyright AFP Image caption Faid escaped from the Sud-Francilien prison outside Paris

Nearly 3,000 French police have been drafted into the manhunt, a police source told AFP. "Everything is being done to locate the fugitive," an interior ministry official said.

'A spectacular escape'

France's Justice Minister Nicole Belloubet, who travelled to the Sud-Francilien prison in Réau on Sunday evening, called it "a spectacular escape".

"It was an extremely well-prepared commando unit that may have used drones to survey the area beforehand," she said.

The prison courtyard where the helicopter landed was the only area not protected by anti-aircraft netting. Prison union representative Martial Delabroye said that was because inmates do not use it, "except to leave the prison".

Nobody was injured during the jailbreak, which happened at around 11:20 (09:20 GMT) on Sunday.

The captured pilot was released, and later taken to hospital suffering from shock.

Faid's accomplices had taken the flying instructor hostage at a small flying club in Fontenay-Trésigny, where he was waiting for a student, and ordered him to fly to the prison.

Faid initially got out of the helicopter and into a black Renault Megane which was seen heading for the A1 motorway. That getaway car was later found burnt out at a shopping centre car park in Aulnay-sous-Bois, a Paris suburb.

Early on Sunday afternoon, the fugitive was said to have swapped to a white van.

Gangster inspired by Hollywood crime

Born in 1972, Faid grew up in a notoriously rough part of Paris.

In the 1990s, he ran a gang involved in armed robbery and extortion in the French capital. He has said his lifestyle was inspired by Hollywood gangster films, including the Al Pacino thriller Scarface.

He is devoted to US director Michael Mann's stylised crime thrillers, especially 1995 gangster film Heat.

He once approached Mann at a Paris film festival and told him: "You were my technical adviser."

Faid claimed to have watched the film dozens of times to hone his skills as a bank robber.

Image copyright AFP/Getty Images Image caption Forensic police investigate the black car abandoned by Redoine Faid at a shopping centre car park

In 2009, Faid wrote a book about his experiences of growing up in Paris's crime-ridden suburbs and graduating into a life of law-breaking.

He claimed to have turned his back on criminality, but a year later was involved in the failed robbery which earned him a prison stretch in Réau, in the Seine-et-Marne region.

French police have nicknamed the gangster "L'Écrivain" - "the writer" - in a nod to his autobiography and subsequent media tour.

One of Faid's most recent prison supervisors said he was never in conflict with guards, but that "we must always be wary".

"In the corner of his mind, he never lost the idea of escaping. Behind all his manners - he is very polite - he always hid his game," the supervisor said.

Timeline of a jailbreaker

Faid's cycle of imprisonment and escape began with his arrest in 1998 on multiple counts of armed robbery and bank theft.

In 2009 he was freed on parole, swearing that he was a changed man - but by 2011, he had breached his terms of release and was back behind bars.

In 2017, Faid was sentenced to 10 years' imprisonment for his 2013 jailbreak from Séquedin prison, outside Lille. He was also given 18 years for masterminding a 2010 robbery in which a young policewoman, Aurélie Fouquet, was killed.

Faid mounted a failed appeal, and in April 2018 was given a heavier sentence of 25 years for the botched robbery. He was serving that term at the time of his latest escape.

The fugitive is not the first to escape a French jail by helicopter.

In 2001, three armed robbers fled a prison in Draguignan, southern France, after an accomplice hijacked a helicopter from an airfield in nearby St Tropez.

Two years later, inmates accused of running an international drugs ring escaped a remand centre near Aix-en-Provence by similar means.</s>Three accomplices, who reportedly had Kalashnikovs, extracted Redoine Faïd from the Seine-et-Marne prison on Sunday.

According to sources, the gunmen arrived at the entrance of the prison to create a diversion.

Simultaneously, a helicopter landed in the prison courtyard, which was not covered by any nets. Gunmen then took Faid from the visiting room and fled in the helicopter.

The helicopter was found burnt out in Gonesse, a northeastern suburb in Paris. Police later found a burnt out black Renault, suspected of being the getaway car, in Aulnay-sous-Bois, another suburb of the French capital.

The 46-year-old is serving a 25-year sentence for a failed cash-transport van robbery in 2010 during which a police officer was killed.

Jean-François Forget, secretary general of the country's Penitentiary Union, said the prisoner “was in an isolation ward that had no special surveillance measures.”

This is Faïd's second prison break — in 2013 he escaped less than half an hour before arriving at a prison in northern France.

In that escape, he took four prison wardens hostage and blasted a number of doors with explosives before fleeing in two getaway cars.

He was on the run for six weeks before police captured him in a hotel with an accomplice.

In 2009 Faïd wrote a book about his past and rise as a criminal in Paris' suburbs. Faïd said he was inspired by American films such as Scarface and Heat.</s>For obvious reasons, not a lot is publicly broadcast about the security measures in place at the Sud Francilien Penitentiary Center in Reau, France, about 25 miles southeast of Paris.

An old brochure for the facility, published before it was constructed in 2011, boasted of an “exceptional” penitentiary that would feature diverse landscaping: There would be meadows, embankments, ditches to retain water. About 200 trees and 9,000 plants and shrubs would be planted on the campus. Two facilities would house more than 500 male and female prisoners.

The brochure included no mention of a courtyard — large enough for a light utility helicopter such as, say, an Aerospatiale Alouette II — that would, notably, be the only part of the prison not covered by “anti-helicopter netting,” according to the Associated Press.

Less than a decade later, on a warm Sunday morning, a small white helicopter would fly over the prison's plentiful foliage and land in the aforementioned courtyard. The passenger it sought was a 46-year-old gangster named Rédoine Faïd, who had been serving a 25-year sentence at the prison for armed robbery and murder.

Soon, Faïd reportedly appeared in the courtyard, escorted by armed accomplices who had freed him from the prison visiting room, and boarded the aircraft, Reuters reported. Moments later, the convict disappeared into the sky and out of captivity — all in broad daylight.

The actual prison break took “a few minutes,” according to France's Justice Ministry, but the plans had been unfolding all morning.

Earlier Sunday, Faïd's associates had taken a helicopter pilot hostage at a nearby flight school, forcing him to fly to the prison, the BBC reported. Afterward, three armed men created a diversion at the prison entrance as the hijacked helicopter touched down in the courtyard, according to the news site.

Faïd's escape spurred a massive manhunt across greater Paris. Not long after the prison break, the helicopter was found abandoned in a field in Gonesse, a suburb just northeast of Paris, photos of the scene showed.

Faïd allegedly then got into a black escape vehicle, which also was found abandoned in Aulnay-sous-Bois, another Paris suburb, the BBC reported.

The French National Police said Sunday that it had mobilized its forces and urged people to notify authorities with any pertinent information. Justice Minister Nicole Belloubet visited the prison to evaluate security measures, according to her agency's Twitter account. She is set to appear on a French news program at 7:20 a.m. Monday, local time, to discuss the prison break.

Sunday's escape was not the first time that Faïd had pulled off a dramatic prison break. In 2013, he managed to escape from a prison in Lille, France, by taking four guards hostage and then detonating explosives hidden in a tissue box to blow out the prison gates, local outlets reported. He was recaptured six weeks later at a hotel in suburban Paris — but not before he briefly claimed the title of France's “public enemy number one,” the Independent reported.

As John Lichfield wrote for the Independent after the widely reported 2013 escape, Faïd was inspired by the crime bosses and schemes depicted in old Hollywood films:

As a young delinquent in a troubled suburb north of Paris, Faïd took his inspiration, and modus operandi, from American gangster movies. “Take away the [lessons taught by] cinema and you would have 50 per cent less crime,” he once told Michael Mann, the director of Heat (1995), his favourite film. In a raid on a security truck in 1997, Faïd and his associates wore ice-hockey masks like the hero-villains of Heat. Three years ago, when he envisaged giving up crime for a career in the movies, he boasted: “I see everything in CinemaScope.” Faïd’s other hero is Jacques Mesrine, the most celebrated French criminal of modern times. Mesrine also turned his life into a kind of movie script, with interviews and letters to newspapers, before he died in a police ambush on the northern outskirts of Paris in 1979.

Faïd has a violent criminal record dating to at least the 1990s, when he organized the robberies of banks, shops and armored vehicles. He took families, couples and once a police officer hostage, according to the Telegraph.

He spent years as an international fugitive before his capture and a decade in prison, then wrote an autobiography after his release on parole in 2009. In it, he claimed to have been inspired by the U.S. gangster film “Scarface,” the Telegraph wrote, but said his life of crime was behind him.

The same year the book came out, the Telegraph wrote, Faïd was suspected of masterminding a botched armed robbery, in which a police officer was killed in a shootout. He received an eight-year prison sentence in 2011 — interrupted by the 2013 breakout.

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What World War II’s ‘Operation Pied Piper’ taught us about the trauma of family separations</s>France's Justice Ministry: French criminal convicted of murder has escaped from prison via a helicopter

PARIS (AP) — France's Justice Ministry: French criminal convicted of murder has escaped from prison via a helicopter.</s>One of France's most notorious criminals busted out of a prison on Sunday in an elaborately orchestrated escape in which heavily armed commandos landed a hijacked helicopter on the grounds of the lockup near Paris, overwhelmed guards and whisked him to freedom in just a "few minutes," officials said.

A massive manhunt was underway for Redoine Faid, who broke out the Reau Prison south of Paris. It marked the second time in less than five years that Faid has absconded from a maximum-security penitentiary.

“It was a spectacular escape. It was certainly a very well-prepared [prison break]," French Justice Minister Nicole Belloubet said during a news conference Sunday outside the prison.

Belloubet said three armed accomplices wearing masks and dressed all in black hijacked the helicopter with its flight instructor and forced him at gunpoint to land in the prison courtyard about 11:30 a.m. local time.

"Two commandos entered the prison to look for Redoine Faid as the third man was staying with the helicopter instructor," Belloubet said. "The two men used a grinding machine to open the door to the visiting room where Faid was and picked him up and left."

The commandos also used smoke bombs to shield their movements from surveillance cameras, Belloubet said.

Faid, 46, was serving a 25-year sentence for a botched 2010 armed robbery in which 26-year-old French police officer Aurélie Fouquet was killed during a gun battle.

Belloubet said Faid was in a room visiting with his brother, Brahim, when the commandos burst in, grabbed Faid and hustled him to the waiting whirlybird.

The justice minister said the escape took only "a few minutes" and that no one was injured.

Guards at the prison, who were unarmed, told officials they were overwhelmed by the heavily armed men and could do nothing to stop Faid from bolting, officials said.

The helicopter was found abandoned and torched in Garges-les-Gonesse, a town in the suburbs north of Paris. Police believe Faid was transferred to a waiting getaway car, which was also found ditched.

The hijacked pilot, a member of a flying club near Paris, was released unharmed, Belloubet said.

Belloubet said the prison break likely took months to plan and that authorities suspect Faid's accomplices had thoroughly staked out the prison and possibly used drones to determine the best spot to land the helicopter.

Belloubet said the commandos put the helicopter down in the only place in the prison that was not covered by anti-helicopter netting.

"A few months ago, the prison’s staff said they saw drones flying over the prison," Belloubet said.

Faid's brother, Brahim, was detained by authorities for questioning.

The prison break came a little over five years after Faid broke out of the Sequedin prison on April 13, 2013. In that escape, Faid used explosives smuggled in to him to blast through five prison doors, took four guards hostage and used them as human shields while making his way to a getaway car and fleeing.

He was captured on May 29, 2013 when authorities found him hiding out at a hotel in Pontault-Combault, east of Paris.

Faid is something of a celebrity criminal in France, having embarked on a life of crime in the 1990s when he and his gang pulled off a series of bank- and armored-car heists.

He was arrested in 1998 following a global manhunt that tracked him to Switzerland and Israel.

After completing a 10-year prison sentence, Faid wrote a book in 2009 about his life in crime.

Faid is not the first prisoner to escape in a helicopter. His prison break marked the 12th time since 1986 that an inmate in France has used a helicopter to flee prison walls.

The most famous helicopter escape in France occurred in 1986 when bank robber Michel Vaujour's wife, Nadine Bourgain, landed a chopper at the La Sante Prison on the Left Bank of Paris, plucked up her husband and flew away. Authorities later learned that Bourgain spent months before the escape teaching herself how to fly a helicopter.</s>A notorious thief who was once France’s most-wanted man pulled off a jailbreak on Sunday, fleeing a prison in the Paris area by helicopter, officials said.

Rédoine Faïd, 46, broke out of the prison in Réau in the capital’s southeastern suburbs within minutes, helped by several heavily-armed men, sources close to the case said.

He fled with three accomplices and the helicopter was later found in a northeastern suburb of Paris, the sources said. A police search has been launched across the region.

It was the second time Faïd has pulled off a jailbreak – in 2013 he blasted his way out of a prison in northern France using dynamite but was found six weeks later.

Prior to this, he was released after a decade behind bars after convincing parole officials that he regretted his criminal past and was determined to start afresh.

An appeals court sentenced Faïd to 25 years in April for masterminding an armed robbery in May 2010 that turned into a gunfight, in which a policewoman was killed.

Faïd, who grew up in tough Paris suburbs, has made several television appearances and co-authored two books about his delinquent youth and rise as a criminal.

He said his life of crime was inspired by American films such as “Scarface” and “Heat”.</s>PARIS — A jailbreak of the kind usually dreamed up for Hollywood screenplays unfolded in real life Sunday in France when a helicopter landed in a prison courtyard and masked men leapt out and spirited away a well-known criminal.

A manhunt was still underway Sunday evening for the inmate, Rédoine Faïd, 46, who was serving 25 years for his part in a 2010 robbery that resulted in the death of a young police officer.

Justice Minister Nicole Belloubet said the commando team that rescued Faïd from the Réau Prison on the outskirts of Paris had been "very well prepared and without a doubt had scoped out the place using drones." She added, in comments broadcast by the French television station BFMTV, that the staff had spotted drones over the prison several months ago.

It was not the first time Faïd had escaped from prison.

In 2013, he took four prison guards hostage while using plastic explosives to blast his way through five sets of prison doors, before meeting an accomplice who was waiting in a car. Faïd was recaptured several weeks later.

On this occasion, Faïd was in the prison visitors' room when three armed men clad in black landed a small helicopter in the facility's central courtyard, jumped out and set off smoke bombs, according to Martial Delabroye, an official at a local prison workers' union.

Two of the men, wearing balaclavas and police armbands, ran inside, used a grinding machine to cut through the doors to the visiting area and, with Faïd in tow, raced back to the helicopter, Delabroye said.

They flew to the northeastern side of Paris — about 25 miles from the prison — before landing in the suburb of Gonesse, in a neighborhood with warehouses, small office buildings and roadways surrounded by tall leafy bushes — typically a quiet area on a Sunday morning.

Belloubet, who called the jailbreak "completely out of the ordinary," said the three-person commando team had carried it out by taking a flight instructor hostage and forcing him to take them to the prison. She said drone surveillance might have helped them avoid other courtyards that were covered with netting; they chose the only courtyard where they could have landed.

After landing it at Gonesse, the group got into a car and drove away, later dumping that vehicle in the parking lot of a shopping mall in another Paris suburb, according to French news reports.</s>France's most wanted gangster is on the run after pulling off a daring escape from prison this morning using a helicopter that landed in the prison grounds.

Redoine Faid, 46, was serving a long-term sentence at Réau prison south of Paris for armed robbery and the murder of a policewoman in 2010 after a heist that went wrong.

He is one of country's most famous gangsters with a long career as a thief which he has said was inspired by Hollywood blockbuster movies such as "Scarface" and "Heat".

According to the sources, three armed gunmen arrived at the entrance of the prison demanding Faid's release to create a diversion.

Simultaneously, a helicopter landed in the prison courtyard, which was not covered by any nets.

Gunmen then took Faid from the visiting room and fled in the helicopter.

Nobody was injured. The helicopter, whose pilot may have been taken hostage, was found burnt out north of Paris near Charles de Gaulle Airport.

The gangster - who was previously named France's most wanted criminal - and his accomplices are thought to have left the area via car.

Faïd was reportedly the only inmate who escaped from the facility.

Yoan Karar, of the FO prison union, described the robber's unidentified accomplices as expertly trained, professional and heavily armed.

They knew where they were going, Mr Karar said.

Cops have launched a huge hunt to track down Faïd. "Everything is being done to locate the fugitive," an official at the interior ministry said.

Faid had already previously escaped from jail.

In 2013, he took four prison guards hostage before using dynamite to blow his way out of Sequedin Prison and fleeing in a waiting getaway car.

He was on the run for six weeks before police captured him in a hotel with an accomplice.

An Interpol red notice at the time, the closest instrument to an international arrest warrant, described Faid as dangerous.

Following a decade in prison, he was released under conditions in 2009 after convincing his parole officers that he had changed.

His fame has increased since then following appearances in several television shows and authoring books recounting his past and rise as a criminal in Paris' toughsuburbs.

Last year, he was handed a 25-year prison term by an appeals court for a failed armed robbery seven years earlier.</s>A notorious gangster has escaped by helicopter from a prison in the Paris region, French authorities say.

Redoine Faid escaped after three heavily armed accomplices landed the helicopter in the prison courtyard.

Faid, 46, has been serving a 25-year sentence for a failed robbery during which a police officer was killed.

This is his second prison break: in 2013, he escaped after taking four guards hostage as human shields and destroying a number of doors.

He staged that escape less than half an hour after arriving at a prison in northern France.

In 2009 he wrote a book about his experiences of growing up in Paris's crime-ridden suburbs and graduating into a life of crime.

He claimed to have turned his back on crime, but a year later he was involved in the failed robbery for which he was imprisoned at the Seine-et-Marne prison.

Faid and his accomplices escaped from the prison courtyard - which was not protected by a net - without injuring anyone, French news website Europe 1 reports.

The helicopter then flew to the nearby Gonesse area. It was then found burnt out by local police.</s>A jailed gangster in France has escaped prison after being picked up by helicopter, according to local media.

A jailed gangster in France has escaped prison after being picked up by helicopter, according to local media.

Jail break: Notorious French gangster escapes by helicopter with help of three armed accomplices

Three armed accomplices extracted Redoine Faid from the Seine-et-Marne prison, near Paris, late on Sunday morning, Le Parisien reported.

They landed in Gonesse, a northeastern suburb of the French capital, before reportedly continuing their escape by car.

Authorities later found a burnt out black Renault suspected of being the getaway car in Aulnay-sous-Bois, another suburb of Paris.

The assailants are thought to have changed vehicles, continuing their escape in a van, according to Le Parisien.

Jean-François Forget, secretary general of the country's Penitentiary Union, said the detainee “was in an isolation ward, but had no special surveillance measures”.

He added the helicopter was registered in Belgium.

Faid has previously launched an audacious jail break in April 2013, using explosives to blast through five prison doors, taking four prison wardens hostage, and escaping in two getaway cars.

He was re-arrested on a European warrant the following month after being found hiding in a B&B.

Last year, he was sentenced on appeal to 25 years in prison for masterminding a failed 2010 robbery, which claimed the life of a policewoman.
Three heavily armed gunmen who hijacked a helicopter help Rédoine Faïd, one of France's most notorious gangsters, escape from a prison in Réau, Île-de-France. Police later discovered the abandoned helicopter in Gonesse. Faïd previously escaped prison in 2013 and was briefly France's most wanted criminal.