The migrant sex offender who was accidentally released from prison on Friday spent more than an hour asking officers for help before he was allowed to walk free, according to a witness.
Hadush Gerberslasie Kebatu, 41, is believed to be in London after being released from HMP Chelmsford owing to a “human error”, just four weeks after he was sentenced to 12 months in prison for sexually assaulting a teenage girl in Epping.
The Ethiopian national, who arrived in the UK on a small boat in June, was due to be deported back to the east African country after a planned transfer from the prison to an immigration detention centre. The Metropolitan Police is now leading a manhunt to locate him.
Commander James Conway urged Kebatu to hand himself in. “We want to locate you in a safe and controlled way,” Conway said in his appeal. “You had already indicated a desire to return to Ethiopia when speaking to immigration staff. The best outcome for you is to make contact with us directly by calling 999 or attending a police station.”
The Met confirmed that Kebatu has made a number of train journeys across the London area since travelling from Chelmsford on Friday. The offender has sought help from multiple members of the public and police believe he has access to funds.
On Saturday, a delivery driver who was dropping off a fridge to the prison said he saw the moment Kebatu was accidentally released. He said the 41-year-old appeared “confused” and repeatedly asked prison officers for help.
“He came out of the airlock, and kept saying to the officers there, ‘Where am I going? What am I doing? I don’t know where I’m going and what I’m doing’,” the driver, called Sim, told Sky News.
“He was holding a pack of paperwork in his arms, and his bag of bits… He knew he’d been deported. He came over to me and said, ‘I need you to help me.’”
Kebatu was wearing a prison-issue tracksuit and holding a carrier bag
Prison officers then directed Kebatu to the railway station, the driver claimed.
Police said on Saturday that Kebatu was seen getting off a train in Stratford, east London, after heading to the capital from Chelmsford on Friday. They said they had “a high degree of confidence” that Kebatu was still in London.
Officers said it would be “unhelpful to the effectiveness of the manhunt if we were to provide a detailed running commentary”, amid concerns for Kebatu’s own safety.
Kebatu’s arrest in July prompted weeks of protests outside the Bell Hotel in Epping and at other asylum hotels across the country.
Kebatu when he was arrested in July
PA
In a video posted online on Friday, he was seen on Chelmsford high street talking to three other men. He was wearing a grey prison-issue tracksuit and trainers and carrying a see-through bag of belongings. The magazine The War Cry, which is produced by the Salvation Army and is popular in prisons, was visible in the bag. He finished the conversation with the men before walking away.
The location where the video was recorded is 0.2 miles from the nearest police station, about a three-minute walk. The father of Kebatu’s teenage victim said that the justice system had let down his family.
David Lammy, the justice secretary, said he was “appalled” at the error that allowed Kebatu, who prompted protests in Epping after sexually assaulting a woman and 14-year-old girl, to walk free.
Lammy said: “We are urgently working with the police to track him down and I’ve ordered an urgent investigation. Kebatu must be deported for his crimes, not on our streets.”
Roger Hirst, the police and crime commissioner for Essex, told The Times: “This is outrageous and disappointing. I’ve spoken to the chief constable and it is a large-scale hunt to find him and will involve neighbouring forces.
“He’s a registered offender and it’s just a case of finding him so he is dealt with. It’s particularly galling for policing, who did such good work to catch him, within two hours of his original offence, and to have this happen is extraordinary.”
Nigel Farage, leader of Reform UK, said: “The Epping hotel migrant sex attacker has been accidentally freed rather than deported. He is now walking the streets of Essex. Britain is broken.”
A Home Office source said it had prepared Kebatu’s deportation to Ethiopia and that he was due to be on a flight “within days”. Plans to deport him had been complicated by the lack of a formal returns agreement with Ethiopia and although the Home Office has deported two Ethiopians this year, the department regards some regions of the east African country as “unsafe”, which has been used previously by migrants to successfully block their removal.
Ethiopia is not one of the 23 countries that allow the UK to pursue a “deport now, appeal later” policy.
The prison service said it was urgently investigating how he was released and that an officer had been removed from duties while the investigation took place.
A spokesman said: “We are urgently working with police to return an offender to custody following a release in error at HMP Chelmsford. Public protection is our top priority and we have launched an investigation into this incident.”
John Podmore, a former governor of HMP Brixton, Belmarsh and Swaleside, and a former prison inspector, said that the mistaken release “should be seen in the context of wider failure” in the prison and probation systems.
He told the Today programme: “This is not one person making one decision, there should be checks by a range of people up and down the hierarchy.”
In the 12 months leading up to March this year, 262 prisoners were released in error in England and Wales, according to the prison service. Its annual report said that this was a 128 per cent increase from 115 the previous year. Of the 262 mistaken releases, 233 were from prisons, while 29 people were released in error at the courts.
A former justice secretary called for an inquiry into the mistakes that led to Kebatu being released. Alex Chalk KC told Times Radio the incident shows there is “a real malaise” in the prison system, pointing to the fact that over the past year the number of errors has more than doubled.
“As a former justice secretary that immediately rings alarm bells because it leads me to think, ‘Hang on, what is going on in the offender manager units? Does this mean that we haven’t got sufficiently qualified people in there?’” Chalk asked. “These are the sorts of issues that have to be addressed.
“I think it’s perfectly reasonable to have an inquiry to find out what went wrong and see how procedures can be improved. Because the corrosive impact of this on public trust is hard to overstate. It’s just horrendous.”
The accidental release of Kebatu deals another blow to the government, coming just a couple of days after it emerged that an Iranian migrant had returned to the UK on a small boat less than a month after he had been removed to France under the one in, one out deal.
Kebatu was sentenced to 12 months in prison after being convicted of sexually assaulting a 14-year-old girl and a woman. A trial at Chelmsford magistrates’ court last month was told he tried to kiss and touch the teenager on two consecutive days in July.
The court was told that Kebatu, who paid €1,800 (£1,551) to travel to Britain on a rubber dinghy, followed the girl on the second day and tried to make her kiss her male friend. He then put his hand on the girl’s thigh.
Kebatu approached the girl and her friend, who were both in school uniform, near the hotel, invited them inside and told them he wanted them to “have his babies”. The judge described the assault as a “disgusting and sickening” experience for the victim.
Kebatu qualified for immediate deportation because of a change in the law that came into effect on the same day he was sentenced. It means foreign criminals can be deported after serving just 30 per cent of their sentence. He had already served enough time in prison on remand to qualify for deportation.
His arrest led to weeks of protests outside the Bell Hotel, where he was living alongside 138 other migrants. He had arrived in the UK on a small boat just eight days earlier.
• Migrant deported under one in, one out scheme returns on small boat
Marie Goldman, the MP for Chelmsford, said: “I am closely following developments and am in contact with the police and the prison. The police must do everything they can to ensure that this man is returned to custody immediately so that he is deported at once.
“Once the manhunt is over, there must be a full, rapid public inquiry into how this happened. This is utterly unacceptable and has potentially put my constituents in danger. I expect answers from the prison service.”
Before his accidental release, Kebatu had been held at HMP Chelmsford, a category B prison that has previously housed high-profile inmates, including the former footballer Tony Adams and the reality television personality Stephen Bear.
Sources said he had been on a “standard” prison regime, with access to television, books and gym facilities, as well as the ability to order snacks and toiletries from the prison canteen. He had been considered an “escape risk” and was kept apart from other prisoners for his own safety because of the publicity surrounding his case.