PARIS, Oct. 3 (Xinhua) -- French police on Wednesday arrested Redoine Faid, a gangster who escaped prison by helicopter in July, outgoing Interior Minister Gerard Collomb said.
"Arrest of Redoine Faid: judicial police demonstrated commitment, pugnacity and determination to enforce the law of the Republic. They have my admiration, as do the 250,000 police officers who serve our country every day," Collomb tweeted.
Dubbed the "jailbreak king," Faid was arrested in the early hours on Wednesday in an apartment in his native town of Creil in northern France along with his brother, two nephews and a woman.
Two other accomplices were arrested in the Paris suburbs, according to local media.
On July 1, the 46-year-old gangster broke out of a prison south of Paris using a helicopter that landed on the jail grounds. Two heavily armed men used smoke bombs and angle grinders to free Faid while he was meeting his brother in the visitors' room.
The razed helicopter, which had been hijacked from a flying club, was later found by local police.
Faid was serving a 25-year sentence for an armed robbery that went wrong and led to the death of a policewoman in 2010.
In 2013, in his first escape which seemed to be inspired by Hollywood movies, Faid held four prison wardens hostage and used explosives to blast through five prison doors.
He was on the run for six weeks before he was captured by the police.
In 2009, while still on parole, Faid wrote a book recounting his past and his rise as a criminal in the suburbs of Paris. In the book he claimed to have turned his back on crime, but was jailed again only one year later for committing yet another robbery.
