Four months of research of a rare intensity. 93 days, precisely. This is the time it took the National Fugitive Search Brigade (BNRF) to locate Rédoine Faïd. On July 1, 2018, the multi-recidivist robber made the beauty of the ultra-secure prison of Réau, in Seine-et-Marne. The scenario is worthy of an American film: his accomplices came to get him in a helicopter, cutting out the doors one by one with a thermal grinder. Less than an hour later, the commando disappeared into the wild. Rédoine Faïd then becomes the most wanted man in France.
How was his hunt organised? What avenues have been explored? How was he located in a small apartment in Creil? As the trial of this incredible escape opens this Tuesday, for seven weeks, the commissioner Christophe Foissey, then at the head of the BNRF, the fugitive search brigade, returns to this extraordinary investigation. Certainly one of the most significant of his career.
How did you learn of Rédoine Faïd’s escape?
It was my assistant who called me, I had just returned from vacation. My first feeling was bewilderment. We knew that Rédoine Faïd was a seasoned criminal, he had already proven it. But from there to escape from Réau, which is considered to be one of the most secure prisons… By helicopter too… We had already been seized when he escaped from Lille-Sequedin prison in 2013, we knew who we were dealing with. He’s a seasoned criminal, we tell ourselves that it’s going to be complicated and at the same time, we have an advantage: we’re not starting from nowhere, we know his habits, we’ve already worked on him.
An hour after his escape, the trace of Rédoine Faïd and his accomplices is lost on the A1 motorway. How do you organize yourself within the service to find him?
At the BNRF, we very rarely work on escapes in flagrante delicto. Usually, the criminals we are looking for have been carefully chosen according to a certain number of criteria, we have time to work. There, you have to go fast. Fortunately for us, a few months before Rédoine Faïd’s escape, we urgently had to look for an S file who had escaped from Brest prison. It was a kind of life-size exercise for us, we had defined a procedure if it happened again, we had organized ourselves to be immediately operational.
The other files were immediately put on hold so that the whole brigade – that’s about twenty people – could focus on Rédoine Faïd.
How did you proceed?
We did as always when looking for a fugitive: we start by looking at his environment. We explore, circle by circle, his family, friendly and criminal surroundings. In this, his previous escape served us enormously since we had already established these links.
In parallel with this work, two other groups are set up. One works on telephony, the second studies the incoming information. During his escape in 2013, it was a tip that allowed us to locate him. Unfortunately this time they all turned out to be wrong.
At the start of the investigation, do you fear that he has gone abroad?
It’s one of the avenues explored, we don’t close any doors. But a run is expensive and we are not convinced that he has a sufficient financial basis to leave. When part of his logistics is found somewhat by chance by a hunter in the forest of Creil *, this confirms this intuition. We say to ourselves that he is not far away, that he is evolving in his family circle. We are not very surprised: to ally with Rédoine Faïd, for a major trafficker, it is too risky, he is too well known.
Rédoine Faïd and his accomplices leave a lot of clues in their escape…
As in 2013, we see that his escape is very professional, that he probably spent days and days studying the smallest detail, spotting the flaws. On the other hand, his run is much less so. He was almost arrested by chance by a gendarmerie brigade **. Even if he fled, for us it is an encouraging sign: we tell ourselves that he is weak. But if he had gone abroad, we would have found him eventually. We’re arresting fugitives on the other side of the world, it just takes longer.
Tracking Rédoine Faïd, is it like looking for any fugitive?
This is the most intense file we had to deal with when I was in the brigade. For four months, the whole brigade put its life on hold. We worked weekends, late nights. We put a lot of pressure on ourselves, he challenged us. But on the merits, his profile is not so different from some fugitives with whom we have dealt. We worked on much more elaborate, longer rides. I have in mind a very large narcotics trafficker whom we sought for a year abroad or a robber who took several months to locate. The difference is its notoriety and its ability to escape.
How do you end up locating it?
Thanks to a very big work on the telephony. We sifted through thousands of lines. The objective is to find his means of communication, or at least numbers that may interest us, in his entourage in particular. Rédoine Faïd is a very discreet and suspicious person, his phone is always off. Little by little, it allows you to move forward on a *** city, to locate a building. We then launch an operational surveillance and we spot two silhouettes in burkas, we say to ourselves that it could correspond.
When the operation is launched, on October 3, 2018 in the morning, are you convinced that he is inside?
No. We have very strong presumptions but no certainty. We targeted two apartments. The first is on the ground floor. We enter, he is not there. We were wrong. He is finally in the one on the 4th floor. He was arrested without the slightest exchange of fire, neither he nor his accomplices put up any resistance. At that moment, we feel a real relief, we say to ourselves that we have succeeded.