A former asylum seeker and convicted sex offender who was released from prison in error is back in custody and faces deportation.
Hadush Gerberslasie Kebatu, an Ethiopian national, was jailed for 12 months in September for sexually assaulting a woman and a 14-year-old girl and was made the subject of a five-year sexual harm prevention order.
Kebatu, 41, who was released wearing a prison-issue grey tracksuit and holding a plastic bag containing his possessions, made several train journeys across London after being freed on Friday, according to the Metropolitan police.
He took a train from Chelmsford to Stratford in east London on the day he was released and was later spotted in Dalston carrying a white bag with pictures of avocados on it. He was arrested in the Finsbury Park area of north London at about 8.30am on Sunday, the Met said.
Keir Starmer and the justice secretary, David Lammy, said Kebatu would be deported. The home secretary, Shabana Mahmood, said he would be removed as quickly as possible.
Starmer said: “We must make sure this doesn’t happen again. We have ordered an investigation to establish what went wrong.”
Lammy told broadcasters that Kebatu had to be questioned by police before he was deported. “I can assure you that he will be deported as he was expected to be deported. I expect that to happen this week,” he said.
The Met commander James Conway, who oversaw the operation to find Kebatu, said: “This has been a diligent and fast-paced investigation led by specialist officers from the Metropolitan police, supported by Essex police and the British Transport Police.
“Information from the public led officers to Finsbury Park and, following a search, they located Mr Kebatu. He was detained by police but will be returned to the custody of the Prison Service. I am extremely grateful to the public for their support following our appeal, which assisted in locating Mr Kebatu.”
Kebatu’s arrest in July on sexual assault charges led to violent protests outside the Bell hotel in Epping, where he was being housed.
Khadar Mohamed, 24, from Somalia, who was a resident of the Bell at the time and has since been granted asylum, said Kebatu’s arrest on Sunday was a “relief and great news”.
“I hope this doesn’t create any further problems for anyone,” he said. “I think he should be deported. There is no point in keeping him here, he will just make the rest of us look bad if he is kept in the country.”
Jack Neill-Hall witnessed four officers leading Kebatu away as he was walking his dog in Finsbury Park. “They were walking along very calmly,” he said. “Two female officers had their hands on him. His hands were handcuffed but he was walking with them, not struggling, not trying to get away. He was just looking down at the ground, looking pretty dejected. The other two officers appeared to be talking on the radio.”
The health secretary, Wes Streeting, said it was a relief that Kebatu was back in custody. He told GB News: “I am appalled that this man was released, he should never have been on our streets, we will get to the bottom of what went wrong and we will make sure there is accountability and transparency with the public.”
The shadow home secretary, Chris Philp, told GB News: “It’s good that he has been finally caught but I remain shocked that this inept Labour government let him out in the first place. They should never have allowed his release and I think David Lammy and Shabana Mahmood have questions to answer, because they have presided over this system.
“Just eight days after illegally crossing the Channel, [Kebatu] sexually assaulted a 14-year-old girl in Essex, and we don’t want people in this country who are going to attack women and girls in that way, so he should be immediately deported.”
Zia Yusuf, the head of policy for Reform UK, said: “I said yesterday on social media that Britain’s descent into a Monty Python sketch was almost complete. This is a man who eyewitnesses said was actively trying to go back into prison after being accidentally let go. It’s absolutely shocking, and how any victim of sexual assault can look at this Labour government, and [the safeguarding minister] Jess Phillips in particular, and the whole state apparatus right now and have any degree of confidence is beyond me.”
On the day Kebatu was freed from HMP Chelmsford in Essex, a delivery driver described seeing him return to the prison in a “very confused” state four or five times, only to be turned away by prison staff and directed to the railway station.
The driver, named only as Sim, told Sky News that he saw Kebatu come out of the prison saying “Where am I going? What am I doing?” and hanging around for about an hour and a half as he tried to find out where he should be going.
He said Kebatu knew he should be deported but the prison staff were “basically sending him away” and saying to him: “Go, you’ve been released, you go.”
The driver said: “He kept scratching his head and saying ‘where do I go, where do I go?’. The fourth or fifth time [he went into the reception] he was starting to get upset, he was getting stressed. I’m not sticking up for the guy, but in my eyes he was trying to do the right thing. He knew he was getting deported but he didn’t know where he was going or how he should get there.”
Kebatu appears to have been seen later in Chelmsford town centre asking for assistance before getting on a train to London.
Essex police confirmed on Saturday that he caught a train at at 12.41pm on Friday. The Met said he was seen getting off the train in Stratford in east London at about 1.10pm.
As a result, the Met was handed responsibility for the investigation on Saturday morning, the force said.
Prison Service sources said Kebatu’s release was caused by human error. It is understood the prison officer who authorised the release has been removed from duties while an urgent investigation takes place.
One prison source described the incident as a “disaster waiting to happen” because of the high volume of releases being processed by inexperienced staff, and dozens of prisoners serving different tariffs being released at the same time.
The president of the Criminal Justice Workers Union (CJWU), Aaron Stowe, called Kebatu’s mistaken release “a profound failure of duty”. He said: “The release of Hadush Kebatu is a betrayal of the victims, the community and the principles of justice. We demand a full investigation and immediate reforms to ensure this never happens again.”
The CJWU’s general secretary, Mike Rolfe, said: “The justice system is stretched to breaking point, the public’s confidence is collapsing and those tasked with enforcing the law are left to pick up the pieces of political cowardice.”
The father of Kebatu’s teenage victim said he and his family felt “massively let down by HMP Chelmsford, the police, the justice system and our Labour government”.
In a statement read by his local councillor Shane Yerrell, he said: “I had to find out from a reporter that my daughter’s attacker was accidentally released … then be sent images and videos of him walking around throughout the day before the police even alerted her mother.
“Then later that day when I attended HMP Chelmsford to seek some answers I was greeted with hostility and complete disregard for anything I said or asked, totally disrespecting me and my family.”
The incident had caused his daughter “so much stress and anxiety”, he said. “She feared seeing him again in the high road and him recognising her. I’m really worried for my daughter’s mental health and wellbeing because of this assault.”
Kebatu was found guilty of five offences last month after attempting to kiss a 14-year-old girl twice before sexually assaulting her, and sexually assaulting a woman and trying to kiss her.
He committed the offences days after arriving in the UK on a small boat and being placed at the Bell hotel. Protests outside the hotel, which far-right activists sought to exploit, led to assaults on police officers and 32 arrests.
At Kebatu’s trial, the district judge Christopher Williams said Kebatu posed a “significant risk of reoffending”, was manipulative and had acted “ignorantly and repulsively” towards the woman he had assaulted. He was sentenced to 12 months in prison and had served 31 days when he was released.
