Epping sex offender Hadush Kebatu is to be flown back to Ethiopia ‘imminently’ after the fiasco over his release from prison.
Justice Secretary David Lammy has ordered “strengthened checks” at prisons after the blunder over the wrongful freeing of Kebatu.
The Cabinet minister told the Commons that Kebatu had been released by mistake due to “human error.”
He said he would be deported to Ethiopia as quickly as possible.
Mr Lammy also announced an independent inquiry into the blunder which would look at whether jail staff had sufficient training.
Kebatu, an Ethiopian national, was jailed for 12 months in September for the sexual assault of a 14-year-old girl and was wrongly freed from HMP Chelmsford on Friday morning instead of being sent to an immigration detention centre.
The migrant, who had been living at the Bell Hotel in Epping, Essex, when he assaulted the girl, travelled from Chelmsford to London and was arrested on Sunday morning in Finsbury Park.
It is understood that he will be flown back to Ethiopia “imminently”.
The father of Kebatu’s teenage victim said he hopes the sex offender will be “deported immediately” - which the Justice Secretary said should happen this coming week, after he is questioned by police.
Speaking in the Commons about Kebatu’s release, Mr Lammy: "He's back where he belongs, behind bars."
He added: "I can tell the House that he will now be transported for deportation back to Ethiopia as quickly as possible.
"However, this has not changed the fact that Mr Kebatu's victims are rightly outraged about what has happened, and I am livid on their behalf and on behalf of the public.
"This was a mistake which should not have happened. The victims expect better. The public expects better, and this Government expects better from a critical public service which plays a vital role in our first duty to keep the British people safe and from harm."
The Cabinet minister explained that it "appears to have been human error" that led to Kebatu’s release.
But shadow justice secretary Robert Jenrick sought to blame the blunder on the Government, saying the “Kebatu fiasco” was of “Labour’s own making.”
He criticised the Justice Secretary as “calamity Lammy”.
Earlier on Monday, Communities Secretary Steve Reed said he shares the “frustration and fury” of the family of the girl who was sexually assaulted by Kebatu after his mistaken release from prison.
“My jaw was on the floor like everyone else’s when I heard that he had been released in the way that he had been.,” he told Times Radio.
“He shouldn’t even be our country, let alone committing the kind of acts that he carried out.”
He added: “Now I want to pay tribute to the police who have apprehended him, thank goodness, very, very quickly, and the public whose vigilance helped to tip off the police where to identify him.
“And people should be reassured that he will now be deported this week, but it’s very worrying that this individual was released, apparently by accident, and he’s not the only one, so the Ministry of Justice has ordered the full investigation there.
“(An) officer has been suspended, and David Lammy, who’s the Justice Secretary, will be announcing a strengthened series of checks in Parliament later today to make sure this kind of thing doesn’t happen again.”
He blamed the blunder on a “broken justice system” which he said was the fault of the previous Tory governments.
But on Kebatu’s release, shadow home secretary Chris Philp said he remains “shocked that this inept Labour Government let him out in the first place”.
The Conservative MP for Croydon South told GB News: “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.”
It is understood Kebatu, who crossed the Channel in a small boat to enter the UK on June 29, left prison with an amount of personal money but was not given a discharge grant to cover subsistence costs.
He was convicted of making inappropriate comments to a 14-year-old girl before he tried to kiss her on July 7 - just eight days after he arrived in the country on a small boat.
His trial also heard that a day later, he sexually assaulted a woman by trying to kiss her, putting his hand on her leg and telling her she was pretty.
The woman later called 999 after she spotted him being inappropriate to the same teenage girl who he sexually assaulted while she was wearing her school uniform.
The migrant was found guilty of five offences after a three-day trial at Chelmsford and Colchester Magistrates’ Courts in September and his sentencing hearing heard it was his “firm wish” to be deported.
In court, Kebatu gave his date of birth through a translator as being in December 1986, making him 38 years old, although Essex Police have said their records state his date of birth is in December 1983, making him 41.
Kebatu’s crime led to protesters and counter-protesters taking to the streets in Epping, and eventually outside hotels housing asylum seekers across the country.
