Cancelling Hadush Kebatu’s flight out of the country would have cost thousands of pounds, the minister said.
Policing Minister Sarah Jones, left, said paying £500 pounds to deport Hadush Kebatu was the right decision.
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Alamy
It is “galling” that a migrant sex offender was paid £500 to leave Britain – but it was the right decision, Policing Minister Sarah Jones has told LBC.
Hadush Kebatu was jailed after sexually assaulting a 14-year-old girl and a woman in Epping, Essex, while living in an asylum hotel, but was mistakenly set free by prison staff on Friday.
He was brought back into custody following a two-day manhunt before being escorted out of the country by a team of five security guards and given a ‘discretionary’ £500 payment due to his threats to disrupt his removal.
News of the payment has raised eyebrows, but Ms Jones said the “operational decision”, which was made by the team in charge of his removal, was the right one.
She told Nick Ferrari at Breakfast: “The operation took the decision in that moment to offer him money, which I know is quite galling and sticks in the throat a bit with all of us.”
But she said that in this case it was the “right decision to make” as it got him “out of the country” in a measure that saved thousands of pounds.
Read more: Migrant who sexually assaulted girl, 14, was given £500 to leave Britain
Hadush Kebatu was accidentally released from HMP Chelmsford.
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Getty
“We do not spend taxpayers’ money on military planes or private jets or anything like that for these people,” she said.
She added: “We put them on commercial flights with people who are going on their holidays or going to visit relatives.
“They took the decision that in order to get him on that plane they would give him the £500 so that we could get him out of the country. That saved us thousands of pounds.”
Ms Jones said new flights would need to have been booked and this would have cost £10,000.
“If we hadn’t been able to get on that plane, then he would have been held for another day.
“So the choice was £500 versus £10,000. And I think in terms of use of taxpayers’ money, that was the right decision to make.”
A spokesman for Kebatu’s victim’s family told LBC on Wednesday they were ‘gutted’ at being kept in the dark about blunders surrounding his mistaken release and deportation.
He said “the family haven’t heard from anybody in the government and they haven’t received an apology either”.
It “just adds further insult to the way that this case has been dealt with,” he added.
The Home Office confirmed Kebatu arrived back in Ethiopia after being deported from the UK on Tuesday, with the migrant told he has no right to return.
It comes after it was revealed that ‘human error’ by a prison officer led to the release of the Epping sex offender last week.
The migrant, who had been living at the Bell Hotel in Epping, Essex, was jailed after he was found guilty of sexually assaulting a 14-year-old girl and a woman, an incident that sparked nationwide protests.
The Ethiopian national was mistakenly released from HMP Chelmsford on Friday at around 10:25am instead of being sent to an immigration detention centre, triggering a two-day manhunt.
Deputy Prime Minister David Lammy told MPs in the Commons that he was “livid” at the release and ordered an urgent review.