Interpol join search for French jail-break robber

INTERPOL has joined the hunt for a French bandit who escaped from prison after taking four guards hostage and blasting through a series of armoured doors to a waiting car.

French officials said Redoine Faid had a gun and explosives hidden in tissue packets when he escaped on Saturday from the jail in Lille, near the Belgian border. He then fled in a car, freeing his hostages along the way.

It wasn’t the first time Faid, an armed robber being held over the death of a police officer, had gone on the run. He was arrested in 1998 after three years on the loose in Switzerland and Israel.

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Faid was freed after serving ten years of his 31-year sentence, and swore he had turned his life around, writing a confessional book about his life of crime and going on an extensive media tour. “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 was jailed again in May 2010.

Interpol yesterday put out its equivalent of an arrest warrant.