The Great Escape

(CNN) -- Interpol has issued an international wanted notice for a French gangster who authorities say used explosives as part of a brazen escape from a prison in Lille, France, over the weekend, the organization said Monday.

 

Redoine Faid held five people, including four guards, at gunpoint at the detention center Saturday, officials said. He then burst his way to freedom by detonating explosives that destroyed five doors, penitentiary union spokesman Etienne Dobremetz told CNN affiliate BFMTV.

Interpol announced Monday that it issued its wanted notice, known as a red notice, within hours of Faid's escape. A European arrest warrant covering 26 countries also was issued for him Saturday.

Red notices alert police agencies around the world that a person is wanted, but they are not arrest warrants. Each of Interpol's 190 member countries is expected to apply its national laws and standards in determining whether to detain the wanted person.

Faid's escape has raised a number of questions: How did an inmate get guns and explosives? How did he manage to use those to force his way out? And, after all that, why is he still at large?

The four guards whom Faid allegedly held hostage "are safe and sound," Lille prosecutor Frederic Fevre said.

Still, officials from the prison guards' union pressed French Justice Minister Christiane Taubira to make prisons safer, including more thorough searches of those who enter, BFMTV reported.

The escape may be due partly to a problem plaguing the prison that couldn't hold Faid: overcrowding.

Built in 2005, the Lille-Sequedin penitentiary is not old, but it's not well designed to keep watch on prisoners, said Jimmy Delliste, a former associate director there.

"The construction ... makes it particularly difficult to manage detainees, who are particularly difficult to watch," Delliste told BFMTV.

And such a prison was holding a convict who fashioned himself as a modern-day gangster.

Faid, 40, thought big, getting inspiration from the movies. He wore a hockey mask, like Robert DeNiro's character in the movie "Heat," and acted audaciously in attacking armored trucks among other targets.

"He lives his life like a hero from a Hollywood film," said Pierre Fourniaud, who edited Faid's 2010 autobiography, "Robber: From Suburbs to Organized Crime."

Faid wanted to be a robber from the age of 6, Fourniaud said.

"He wants to be known as the greatest gangster -- public enemy No. 1, so this morning all the papers are calling him just that," Fourniaud said. "I think that's his satisfaction."

In 1998, after three years on the run during which he fled to Switzerland, Faid was caught. Sentenced to 20 years, he spent time in high-security prisons around France.

After more than a decade behind bars, the Frenchman insisted he'd changed. But this promise didn't last long, French authorities said.