The Prisons of Vendin-le-Vieil (Pas-de-Calais) and Condé-sur-Sarthe (Orne) were chosen by Gérald Daranin to welcome the largest drug traffickers in the country. Even the formidable Redoine Faïd has failed to escape.
The 200 “bigger drug traffickers” will be incarcerated in the most secure prisons in France: Vendin-le-Vieil (Pas-de-Calais) and Condé-sur-Sarthe (Orne). Information confirmed by Gérald Darmanin, Thursday, March 6. Severe physical contribution, videoconference for exchanges between detainees and judges, no physical contact with visitors, installation of millimeter wave portals … The conditions of detention will be hard. It is simply a “prison revolution”, in the words of the Minister of Justice. Especially since these two establishments already have a “high security” profile as desired by the Keeper of the Seals: they welcome detainees with an extremely sensitive profile, like Redoine Faïd, known as the “King of the beautiful”.
A time specializing in the attack of armored vans and now considered as the most monitored inmate in France, Redoine Faïd had taken the direction of the Penitentiary Center in Condé-sur-Sarthe, after his incarceration in Fleury-Mérogis. He was then under the status of particularly supervised prisoners and had been placed in isolation. But here, no trace of escape concerning him, proof, already, of the effectiveness of the penitentiary center, long before its designation as one of the two flagship prisons chosen by the State to accommodate the most dangerous drug traffickers in the country.
The case of the Vendin -le -Vieil prison – where Gérald Darmanin is going this Friday morning – is quite similar. The MultiCidIvist Redoine Faïd robber is precisely incarcerated in this prison. On December 10, 2024, the latter had started a strike at the end after the local secretaries of the UFAP and of Force Ouvrière, information revealed at the time by France Bleu Nord. In question? His conditions of detention and a refusal of the lifting of his isolation. Proof, once again, severe conditions of detentions in this second establishment which also helped to avoid a possible escape, beyond the security nature of the northern prison itself.
“Prisoners will no longer be able to get out at all”
On the other hand, on April 13, 2013, Redoine Faïd escaped from the Penitentiary Center of Lille-Loos-Sequedin (North) thanks to explosives and the hostage taking of four people. Five years later, on July 1, 2018, he escaped this time from the Réau prison (Seine-et-Marne) helped by three hooded and armed accomplices of Kalashnikov. The surveillance cameras are scrambled using smoke bombs and the doors that led to the cut -up visor using a grinder. One of the most spectacular escapes in France will follow, Redoine Faïd runs away as a helicopter piloted by a hostage of the robber’s accomplices. Scenes for the moment impossible to imagine in the prisons of Vendin-le-Vieil and Condé-sur-Sarthe, selected by the Keeper of the Seals to accommodate the dangerous prisoners. Introductory establishments that are part of Gérald Darmanin’s wrestling plan against narcotrafic and organized crime.
In these two prisons, the escape attempts were therefore rare, and especially unsuccessful for the most reckless who tried it. On November 3, 2022, an inmate from the Vendin-le-Vieil prison center managed to climb with bare hands to the roof of one of the prison buildings. Once on the roof and the alert triggered, he had no ambition to escape. He actually wanted to express his anger against a promise not held by the management about the payment of mandates to his family, according to sources close to the penitentiary union of the Supervisors (SPS) to the daily Le Parisien.
In detail, the narcotickers concerned will be imprisoned in the High Security Prison of Vendin-le-Vieil, from July 31, followed in mid-October from that of Condé-sur-Sarthe. “Inmates will no longer be able to go out at all, even to go to an investigating judge,” said Gérald Darmanin. In total, the work blow for the two establishments is estimated at around ten million euros.