Notorious French Robber Faïd Speaks Out on Harsh Prison Conditions

"We are walled up alive." These are the words with which Redoine Faïd, 47, one of the most closely watched inmates in France, describes his prison isolation. "We see no one. We touch no one, in the literal and figurative sense. It is total exclusion: a life of pariah, of outcast of society," "we survive outside of time," he recounted.

He also made it known that some guards "refuse him walks or sports" when others "excessively strip him" to search him and "look at his private parts with several (people)". In a year, the repeat offender robber says he has received less than ten visits.

According to the inmate, all the prison brutality is concentrated in this hyper-criminogenic prison structure because "it is designed to crush your soul". Faced with this situation, Redoine Faïd says he has imposed a steel discipline on himself.

In July 2018, Redoine Faïd had escaped by helicopter from the prison of Réau (Seine-et-Marne). He will be arrested three months later in the Oise and incarcerated in isolation in this penitentiary center opened in 2015.

Five years earlier, the repeat offender robber had already escaped from the prison of Lille-Sequedin. He had been definitively sentenced to 25 years in prison for his role as "organizer" in a failed robbery in 2010. A municipal police officer had died during the operation.

Redoine Faïd will again face justice in 2020 for the robbery of an armored van.