The Fly has been on the run for two weeks. Oclclo investigators are still on the trail of Mohamed Amra and the members of the commando who helped him escape on May 14, during a judicial extraction, by attacking his prison van at the toll booth. ‘Incarville (Eure). Being on the run is a situation that David Desclos experienced it twice in the early 2000s. “It wasn’t easy, it was really intense,” explains to 20 minutes this former robber, who became an artist and producer.
“When you are on the run, you constantly live with a sword of Damocles hanging over your head. We know that we will end up being caught and that we will end up in prison. It makes you think, we don’t see things like this anymore. Everything we experience, we know that it is ephemeral. We realize that we are going to lose our freedom and that we want it. »
“A runaway is very expensive”
Back in 1998. That year, Zidane and the Blues won the World Cup for the first time. David Desclos tried to rob a bank in Caen by digging a tunnel for four months with accomplices. But the operation fails and he is arrested. The next day, he escaped from the police station “without weapons and without violence” by evading police surveillance. “But being on the run is very expensive, you have to make money. So I joined my team and we did a series of burglaries and thefts,” he continues.
During a year, “a lot of things happened to me”. Caught in a “snowstorm”, he narrowly escapes death “in the mountains in Italy”. He goes for winter sports with his wife and friends to Val-Thorens, where he “scours” the chalets to attack safes. David Desclos then went to Brittany, where he robbed banks, then to Spain, which he ended up fleeing “tricard”. His journey also takes him to Switzerland, where he “worked well too”.
“I jumped out of the window”
In January 2000, he decided to go to court. “I wanted to pay off my debt so I could live happily,” he emphasizes. He was sentenced, following his appeal trial, to eight years in prison. In detention, where he spent five years, he wrote a show, “incarcerated with laughter”. Once free, he began a new career playing on “open stages”. But very quickly, his former accomplices contact him and ask him to help them. Which he accepts. And here he is involved in “high-scale” cannabis trafficking. “I went fast between Spain and France. » One day, he was arrested at the border, in Cerbère, with “25 kg of hashish in a suitcase”.
Return to prison. Placed in pre-trial detention for two years, he was released pending his trial. On the day of the hearing, he goes to court with a plan to escape. “A Corsican friend was waiting for me with a motorbike at the exit because I knew I was going to be severely sentenced. I jumped out the window, got on his machine and left,” he says.
“A hunted beast”
His run lasts five years. With his wife and children, he moved to Paris under a false name and went on stage nicknamed Pinlu, “the opposite of Lupin”. After falsifying a cousin’s diplomas, he gets hired as a paramedic. On the run, the fugitive “turns paranoid”. “We pay attention to everything: on the phone, to the people we meet. We take care never to give our address, we make sure before each meeting that it is not an ambush. We are constantly on the alert. At the slightest noise, we jump. At night, we don’t sleep peacefully. We wake up, we sleep dressed with shoes. You always have to be ready to jump out a window and run. »
He then has the impression of being “a beast hunted” by the police, who are trying to obtain information “by offering deals to former accomplices”. Investigators also benefit from “new technologies” and can “listen to or turn on a device remotely, place beacons under cars”.
Helping young people “click”
“A bad check” by the police, avenue de Saint-Ouen, and David Desclos returns to prison, this time in Fresnes. A judge gives him “one last chance” and allows him to benefit from a reduced sentence using an electronic bracelet. Since then, the former robber has led “a normal life”. He set up a production company and became an artist. “I play my show in all the prisons in France, schools, colleges, universities.”
In “Hold-Up”, a musical, he recounts his delinquent journey and talks about his detention. French rap legend Stomy Bugsy (“My dad is a gangster”), who staged the show, takes the stage with him. “I’m well surrounded,” he smiles. David Desclos aspires to help young people “get the hang of it” by promoting restorative justice, a method which consists of confronting perpetrators and victims. He will return to the stage in 2025, at the Théâtre du Gymnase, and has started writing a series for Netflix.