At the assize court in Paris,
Brahim Faïd recognizes this bluntly. Of course he resented his little brother, Rédoine, for involving him in such a story. “It’s human”, justifies the 62-year-old man, orange polo shirt, frail silhouette and sometimes uncertain voice. Without him, this “everyman” as he defines himself, would not be, this Thursday, at the bar of the Paris Assize Court, suspected of having helped him escape from prison in high security of Réau, July 1, 2018.
That morning, they were together in the visiting room when a heavily armed commando, who had arrived a few minutes earlier by helicopter, burst in to free the repeat offender. “He abused me at the time of the escape, I did not know the facts that were going to happen”, insists the one who has always denied his involvement.
However, this father of five children with a clean record swears that his anger did not last. “I forgave in relation to his prison situation. » A few weeks before his escape, Rédoine Faïd was sentenced on appeal to twenty-eight years in prison for a robbery which cost the life of a municipal police officer. “The king of beauty” also had to serve ten years for his previous escape, in 2013, from Lille-Sequedin prison. In the accused box, Rédoine Faïd listens attentively. When their eyes meet, the two men smile at each other.
Another man stares at him. Rachid Faïd, 65 years old, his older brother. Unlike Brahim, he appears detained. He is suspected of being the architect of this escape. “I participated…” he admits straight away. And to specify: “In 2018, it [Rédoine] had 40 years to serve, 40 years in prison. A human being cannot imagine this! So there you go, I did what I had to do. »
“We are not a mafia”
To understand this case, in which two brothers of Rédoine Faïd and three of her nephews are implicated, the court has no other choice than to look at the links which unite this siblings made up of eleven brothers and sisters. And if the investigators and the courts have sometimes presented the Faïds as a “clan”, with all that is opaque behind this word, it is a united family which took the stand. “We are not a mafia,” blasted Rachid, 4th of the siblings. I’m not a violent person, I don’t even touch a fly. »
Hearing them speak one after the other, it’s obvious. If Rédoine Faïd plays the strong arm, he is the strong man of the family. The pillar. “He is the brother that everyone would have liked to have,” summarizes a family friend at the bar. “An anchor,” his sister said of him. When his brother Brahim launched his business, he advised him and gave him a helping hand alongside his work. When the latter needs accommodation with his wife and their little daughter, it is to him that he turns. It was he who also took on the role of substitute father for his nephews when, in 1998, his brother-in-law died in a road accident and his sister was seriously injured.
“Maybe I missed something…”
Rachid had already taken on this role years before. In 1990, when his mother died and his father started a new life in Algeria, he left everything with his wife to return to live in the family apartment and take care of the last five children. “I took the place of the father and mother, it was difficult,” he remembers. Rédoine was then 18 years old and began to take the path of delinquency. “Maybe I missed something…” Rachid pours out.
The enfant terrible of the family listens to him, sheepish. “He has a quality which is also a great flaw: he is generous and always thinks of others before himself,” analyzes his wife, Nadjah, at the helm. She has no doubt, it is because he promised his mother, on her deathbed, that he would watch over his little brothers that he is where he is today. To the point of risking thirty years of criminal imprisonment? “It’s my Samaritan side,” he smiles.
However, he falters while listening to his adopted daughter. It’s when he sees her, his son, and his wife that he says he “regrets”. For getting involved in such an affair, but above all for making them experience the consequences. His daughter, however, does not reproach him. On the contrary, she showers praise on this father present, even behind the prison walls. It took her a while, but today she says she “understands her choices”. “Before being a father, he is also a man and a brother. » Moved, the man cannot hold back his tears. Rédoine Faïd, too, seems overwhelmed. In the family, the young girl continues, “we are very modest but we know that we love each other and we show it…” Sometimes to the point of forgetting ourselves.