It was past midnight on Thursday, October 26, when jurors and judges from the Paris Criminal Court returned to the courtroom they had left on Monday morning to rule on the charges against 12 defendants. After three days of deliberations – an exceptionally long delay – Rédoine Faïd was sentenced to 14 years of criminal imprisonment for his spectacular helicopter escape from the Réau penitentiary in the Paris region, on July 1, 2018.

In 2017, he had been given a 10-year sentence for his first spectacular escape from Sequedin prison in northern France in 2013, using explosives. It was the maximum sentence for such an operation, which he carried out with violence and in an organized group. The punishment increased in this case due to the fact that he was a repeat offender and had taken the helicopter pilot hostage.

The prosecutor had requested 22 years' imprisonment for the 51-year-old multi-recidivist armed robber. The defendant's lawyer, Marie Violleau, called the proposal "a murderer's sentence, given to those who hurt children." She had pleaded that his actions deserved only "between five and eight years." The court placed the marker in the middle, like a judgment of Solomon that could dissuade both Faïd and the prosecution from appealing. The defense will wait until it has heard the reasons for the verdict, on October 30, before expressing its position.

When the decision was announced, the accused was above all, in the words of his lawyer, "rather pleased for those close to him," those whom he had, with this escape, dragged into his judicial whirlwind: five members of his family with clean or insignificant judicial records. The two brothers and three cousins in question have the exact opposite of his thuggish lifestyle, but of them – through his own fault, he admitted – have been living for the past five years in the throes of prison isolation. All were found guilty. Faïd's satisfaction stems from the length of their sentences, which, according to Violleau, "offer some hope."

Eighteen years in prison had been requested for Rachid Faïd, the older brother, aged 65, and the most interesting and touching figure in the hearing. A construction worker and adoptive father of two, he sacrificed his normal life to rescue his little brother from this "place of death" in the name of blood ties, in a mad act: Stepping down from the helicopter, he cut the bolts on four doors with a grinder, the last of which opened onto the visiting room where Rédoine was staying. Rachid was sentenced to 10 years.

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