A father who was jailed over the abduction of his own five-year-old son remains at large after he was mistakenly released from prison last month.
Ifedayo Adedapo Kolawoe Adeyeye was released from HMP Pentonville in London on April 21 despite having another year left to serve on his sentence before being extradited to France.
Prison staff did not realise their error until April 23, with Mr Justice Hayden condemning the “alarming lack of urgency” among prison staff involved in the blunder.
Last June, the judge ruled Adeyeye, a dual British-Nigerian national, had abducted his son, Laurys N’Djosse Adeyeye, from his mother in France in July 2024 and took him to Nigeria, saying the abduction was “in the most serious class of cases”.
Adeyeye, an engineer, was arrested upon his return to the UK and was jailed for six months in January for contempt of court after failing to return Laurys to his mother, Claire N’Djosse, who has not seen her son since he was abducted.
On April 20, the day before he was due to be released, Adeyeye was jailed for a further 12 months for further contempt of court offences, but the High Court heard on Friday he was mistakenly released from HMP Pentonville the following day.
Lawyers for Ms N’Djosse said there was then a “two-day gap” between Adeyeye’s release and an alert being issued to prevent him from leaving the UK.
Barrister Tori Adams, for Ms N’Djosse, asked the court in written submissions to allow reporting of Adeyeye and Laurys’s identities in a bid to locate them, adding the case was of “the utmost seriousness” and that Adeyeye’s whereabouts “remain unknown”.
Mr Justice Hayden allowed the reporting and said “the state has failed”, adding there was an “alarming lack of urgency” from prison staff and that he was “not even sure if the police have any impression of the seriousness” of the case.
He said Adeyeye was a “dangerous threat to his son’s physical and emotional welfare” and had been “entirely dishonest”, adding: “Adeyeye’s detention in custody is the best, perhaps the only, hope of reunification of this boy with his mother.”
He continued: “When the state fails in the way that it has done here, there is a public interest in that being put in the public domain.”
The judge also said the abduction had “devastated” Ms N’Djosse, who followed Friday’s hearing from France through a French interpreter, and that her pain was “visceral and unbearable to watch”.
A Metropolitan Police spokesperson told the Press Association the force was informed by the Prison Service at around 1pm on April 24 that Adeyeye had been mistakenly released, adding officers were “carrying out urgent inquiries in an effort to locate him and return him to custody”.
In a legal first, Mr Justice Hayden ruled last June that the High Court had the power to order that Adeyeye return Laurys to his mother, even though the boy did not live in the UK.
The judge said Laurys was born in France and had lived with his mother since birth, but on July 27 2024 – the first time that Laurys was staying overnight with his father – he was abducted and taken to Nigeria, via the UK.
A Nigerian court later gave parental responsibility for him to two people, believed to be Adeyeye’s relatives, without Ms N’Djosse’s consent.
She has since been trying to secure her son’s return, with Mr Justice Hayden describing the case as “exceptional” and the abduction as involving “complex, sophisticated, long-term planning and deception” by Adeyeye, who is also wanted by authorities in France over the incident.
On Friday, Chris Bryden, also representing Ms N’Djosse, told the court that after Adeyeye returned to HMP Pentonville to serve his second sentence, solicitors for his client received an email from prison staff which said they had “released Mr Adeyeye in error” the following day as the second jail term was “not flagged up”.
Prison staff continued that they would contact police as Adeyeye was “currently unlawfully at large”, adding: “We apologise for this error.”
Mr Bryden said the email did not explain how prison staff missed that Adeyeye was due to be extradited, with Mr Justice Hayden also questioning how prison officers present at Adeyeye’s second sentencing hearing “did not mention it to someone else when he got back”.
The issue of prisoners being accidentally released came into sharp focus last autumn when it emerged that HMP Wandsworth had wrongly freed a convicted sex offender and a fraudster.
Official figures showed that in the year to March 2025, 262 inmates had been mistakenly let out – a 128% increase on the 115 in the previous 12 months.
The Government responded to the crisis with promises to improve systems in prisons that deal with releases.
Forum Shah, a partner at Dawson Cornwell, which represents Ms N’Djosse, urged those with information about Adeyeye’s whereabouts to contact police.
The Ministry of Justice has been approached for comment.
