Searches were underway in the UK yesterday for two men who were mistakenly released from prison – the second and third such incidents in two weeks and part of a growing trend of mistaken releases that have put the government under fire.
London’s Metropolitan Police said it was informed by England’s prison service on Tuesday afternoon that a 24-year-old was ‘released in error’ from Wandsworth prison, in southwest London, on October 29.
The suspect has been identified as Algerian national Brahim Kaddour Cherif.
Police said he is a registered sex offender who was convicted of indecent exposure last year, sentenced to an 18-month community order and put on the sex offenders’ register for five years.
The BBC reported that Cherif last appeared in court in September, charged with failing to comply with requirements for convicted sex offenders.
“Cherif has had a six-day head start but we are working urgently to close the gap and establish his whereabouts,” Paul Trevers, who is overseeing the police investigation, said in a statement.
The second man mistakenly released, 35-year-old William Smith, was let go from the same prison as Cherif on Monday, police in Surrey said.
He was released the same day he appeared at a hearing where he received a 45-month sentence for multiple fraud offences.
“I am absolutely outraged and appalled by the mistaken release of a foreign criminal wanted by the police.
“The Metropolitan police is leading an urgent manhunt, and my officials have been working through the night to take him back to prison,” Deputy Prime Minister and Justice Secretary David Lammy said in a statement after reports emerged of the first mistaken release, according to the BBC.
Just last week, the accidental release of Hadush Kebatu, an Ethiopian man jailed for sexually assaulting a 14-year-old girl, triggered a two-day manhunt and his eventual deportation.
British authorities agreed to give him the equivalent of about $600 to get on a plane, rather than filing a new legal challenge to his deportation.
The number of prisoners released from UK prisons by mistake has more than doubled in the last year, according to government data analysed by Britain’s Telegraph newspaper.
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