Super Criminal Escapes Prison, Using Explosives

Members of Eris, a regional intervention unit of the French penitentiary administration are at work in front of a door opened with explosives by an inmate, Redoine Faid, who managed to escape after holding five wardens hostages, on April 13, 2013 at Sequedin prison. (Philippe Huguen/AFP/Getty Images)

Super Criminal Escapes: A French prisoner, Redoine Faid, using explosives and a gun, escaped from prison over the weekend.

“He is remarkably intelligent, and he is using his intellect to serve his ambitions,” his lawyer, Jean-Louis Pelletier, told French broadcaster BFMTV. Faid “cannot stand being imprisoned anymore.”

Faid’s escape started with holding five people, including four guards, at gunpoint at a detention center in Lille, France. Then he used explosives to destroy five doors, and ran out. No one knows where he obtained the gun or the explosives, so security measures at the prison are being questioned.

The four guards are safe.

Faid drew attention when, after getting out of prison around 2010, he published an autobiography detailing his daring exploits as one of France’s most notorious criminals.

“When I was on the run, I lived all the time with death, with fear of the police, fear of getting shot,” he told Europe 1 radio at the time.

He also promised to give up his criminal ways.

But he was put back into prison on charges relating to an attack in Villiers-sur-Marne, east or Paris, that left a 26-year-old policewoman dead, according to CNN.

Interpol is looking for Faid and an arrest warrant covering 26 countries in Europe has been issued.