The open road for French prisoner

Christophe Khider 53, has spent the last 29 years in prison and is not eligible for release until 2044.

Nonetheless, Khider will be allowed to leave high-security Vendin-le-Vieil prison for unsupervised driving lessons despite a record that includes multiple robberies and a murder as well as several escape attempts.

The Douai Appeals Court dismissed an objection from the Public Prosecution Office and upheld a lower court’s decision to allow Khider to leave prison for 10 lessons.

A statement from the UFA-UNSA prison employees union said it was “flabbergasted” by the Douai ruling and stressed that Khider was classed as a “detainee under particularly close supervision” (DPS).

Khider has in fact received permission to leave prison twice before, but on the first occasion in November 2023 the Public Prosecution office intervened and prevented him from attending a literary meeting.

On the second occasion in March this year he was due to visit the Louvres-Lens museum with other inmates. The outing was cancelled two days after another Vendin-le-Vieil prisoner, Mohamed Amra, escaped from a prison van in an operation that killed two prison officers.

Khider’s lawyer Marie Violleau argued that authorisation to take his driving test was part of the rehabilitation process for a prisoner with “above-average intelligence.”

Twenty-nine years had passed since the first time Khider was taken into custody, Violleau said, and it was 15 years since his last, and only successful, escape in February 2009. He was picked up the following day after a shootout.

“I have to tell you that part of my time is taken up with finding a way to escape,” he told an investigating judge afterwards.

The present decision to allow Khider to take unsupervised driving lessons was the “culmination of an extremely rigorous assessment,” Violleau insists.

“This shows that he is beyond reproach,” she added.