In November 2017, the serial bank robber, jewel thief, and gangster Rédoine Faïd had only just arrived at the Réau prison, located north of Paris, when prison officials noticed drones circling the skies over the central courtyard.
During his first several weeks in the prison, Faïd appeared to be a model inmate. He chatted with guards and obeyed the rules. But Eric Vallet, a senior prison officer, wasn’t fooled. The new inmate had already escaped prison once, in 2013, after using explosives to blast his way through five walls of the Lille-Sequedin penitentiary, in northern France. In Faïd’s excessive politesse at his new facility, Vallet discerned a plot being hatched.
