Gangster makes spectacular escape from jail in helicopter
Paris, July 2 : A notorious criminal who in the past had been branded as France's "Public Enemy No. 1" on Sunday made a cinematic escape from a prison near the country's capital in a helicopter, French authorities said.
Redoine Faid, who had already broken out of a different prison in 2013, was freed by an armed commando of three heavily-armed accomplices that landed on the jail's courtyard while he was in the visitation hall, Efe news agency reported quoting a Justice Ministry statement.
"The escape only lasted a few minutes," the statement said. "There were no hostages or injuries."
The ministry added that the prosecutor's office had launched an investigation and a search operation had been put in place by police.
The getaway helicopter was later found burnt, by local police, in the nearby Parisian suburb of Gonesse, next to the Charles de Gaulle International Airport.
Faid, 46, was serving a 25-year jail sentence at Reau prison, located 40 km to the southeast of Paris, for a botched robbery in 2010 that caused the death of a police officer.
In the 1990s, he was co-leader of a gang engaged in jewel theft, armed robbery and extortion in the Paris area. Although he was sentenced to 30 years in prison for these activities, he was released on parole after 10 years.
In 2009, Faid wrote a book titled "Robber: Cities of Organized Crime", in which he explored his childhood growing up in Paris' marginalised neighbourhoods, or banlieues.
But his greatest moment of notoriety came when he pulled off an astounding prison break that involved taking four guards as hostages and blasting several doors open with explosives, which quickly put him on the top of France's most-wanted list.
He was re-apprehended six weeks later at a Paris hotel and in 2017, he was sentenced to 10 years' imprisonment for that first jailbreak.
Let the Truth be known. If you read VB and like VB, please be a VB Supporter and Help us deliver the Truth to one and all.
Two injuries, one DNF, a DQ as India end messy World Relays campaign
Gaborone (Botswana) (PTI): Amoj Jacob and Ragul Kumar got injured during the men's 4x400m and 4x100 races respectively as India ended their World Athletics Relays campaign in disappointment on the second day of competitions here on Sunday.
The Indian camp had high hopes of making the 2027 World Championships in the men's 4x400m relay but the team did not finish (DNF) the race as Jacob suffered cramps and pulled out of the race after taking the baton from the first leg runner Dharamveer Choudhary. Rajesh Ramesh and Vishal TK were to run in the third and fourth legs.
Those teams which could not qualify for the 2027 Beijing World Championships by reaching the final round of each of the six relay events on Saturday were given another chance in the second qualification round on Sunday.
The top two teams in each of the two heats (in all six relay events) booked the Beijing ticket on Sunday.
India will now have to try and qualify for the World Championships through the Top Lists of the World Athletics, which is a long and tedious process.
In the men's 4x100m race, third leg runner Ragul Kumar fell down the track after failing to hand over the baton inside the exchange zone to fourth leg runner Gurindervir Singh, which clearly showed the lack of coordination among the runners.
Harsh Santosh Raut and Animesh Kujur ran the first two legs.
The Indian quartet was disqualified and Kumar was seen being taken away from the Field of Play with the help of the volunteers.
It was a comedy of errors in the case of the women's 4x100m race, which saw the baton being dropped during an exchange between first leg runner Tamanna and second runner Nithya Gandhe, though the Indians finished the race in 53.09 seconds.
Gandhe started running quite a distance, but after realising that the baton was not in her hand, she turned and ran back to pick it up.
The only silver-lining for the Indian contingent was the national record time in the mixed 4x100m relay race, though the quartet of Ragul Kumar, Nithya Gandhe, Animesh Kujur and Sneha SS finished sixth in heat number two with a time of 41.35 seconds, bettering the previous national mark of 42.30 seconds set in March in Chandigarh.
The mixed 4x400m relay quartet of Theerthesh P Shetty, Kumari Saloni, Nihal William and Rashdeep Kaur ended at fifth in heat number one with a time of 3 minutes and 19.40 seconds.
On Saturday, all the five Indian relay teams had failed to make it to the respective final rounds and thus missed out on the 2027 World Championships berths.
