David Lammy loses TWELVE more prisoners...

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Algerian sex offender and a fraudster released by Wandsworth jail, days after new checks brought in



David Lammy, the UK justice secretary, is under mounting pressure after two more prisoners, including a convicted foreign sex offender, were mistakenly freed, days after he introduced stringent checks for jails.

Lammy had refused multiple times to say whether any more prisoners had been released in error in a bruising session of prime minister’s questions, having been ambushed with a string of pre-planned questions on the issue.

Almost immediately after the exchange it was revealed that Brahim Kaddour-Cherif, a 24-year-old Algerian who had overstayed his visa, had been wrongly released from Wandsworth prison in south London last Wednesday, with the Metropolitan police informed only on Tuesday.

The same prison also accidentally freed the fraudster William Smith, AKA Billy, 35. Described as white, bald and clean-shaven, he was sentenced to 45 months for multiple fraud offences on Monday and freed in error the same day.

The latest errors come just weeks after Hadush Kebatu, an Ethiopian national, was accidentally freed from Chelmsford prison despite convictions for sexually assaulting a 14-year-old girl and a woman days after arriving in the UK in a small boat.

Lammy had ordered five pages of new checks for prison governors after the release of Kebatu, who was supposed to have been removed to an immigration detention centre. He was arrested in north London and deported after being given a £500 discretionary payment.

The Guardian understands that Cherif was in prison for trespass with intent to steal but was convicted in November 2024 of indecent exposure linked to an incident in March of the same year. He was sentenced to an 18-month community order.

Cherif is understood to have entered the UK legally on a visitors’ visa in 2019 but overstayed. An “automatic probable overstayer” case was created by the Home Office in February 2020 and he is, sources say, in the initial stages of the deportation process. Questions will be raised as to why he was not removed from the UK five years ago after overstaying his visa.

The Met was informed of Cherif’s release shortly after 1pm on Tuesday, giving him a six-day head start. He has links to the Tower Hamlets area, but is also known to frequent the Westminster area.

A Met spokesperson said: “Shortly after 1300hrs on Tuesday 4 November, the Met was informed by the Prison Service that a prisoner had been released in error from HMP Wandsworth on Wednesday 29 October.”

Surrey police, meanwhile, put out an appeal to find Smith. He had appeared in Croydon crown court via a live video link from HMP Wandsworth, before being released in error.

The Prison Service is examining the possibility that officers did not have a warrant to hold the men in custody. There has been an increasing number of cases in which prisoners are being moved between jails and courts and warrants are being lost and misplaced in the process. This forces prison staff to allow prisoners to walk free.

Downing Street said Cherif was “a concerning case”, with Keir Starmer’s official spokesperson adding: “It’s unacceptable, and the circumstances behind it will be forensically looked at … It’s clearly a developing situation, and it’s important to establish the facts.”

The spokesperson said: “One mistaken release is too many, as we saw in the Kebatu case. That is why we’ve ordered the review led by Lynne Owens. I think it’s fair to assume that this case will form part of that review.”

The Labour MP Rosena Allin-Khan, whose constituency includes Wandsworth prison, said after hearing of Cherif’s release: “I’m horrified to learn that someone was mistakenly released from Wandsworth prison.

“Local residents will quite rightly be deeply concerned. We urgently need answers from the government and Ministry of Justice as to how this was allowed to happen.”

In tense Commons exchanges, the Tory frontbencher James Cartlidge, standing in for Kemi Badenoch at prime minster’s questions, clashed with Lammy, who was standing in for the prime minister, who is in Brazil for the COP summit.

Cartlidge asked repeatedly whether any asylum-seeking offenders had been accidentally let out of prison since Kebatu. He is understood to have been aware of at least one release when he asked his questions.

He said: “He’s the justice secretary. He’s responsible for the justice system. He needs to take responsibility … Can he reassure the house that since Kebatu was released, no other asylum-seeking offender has been accidentally let out of prison?”

The Conservatives called on Lammy to return to the Commons to make a statement. A spokesperson said: “If we knew, we can only assume the justice secretary knew.”

The Prison Officers’ Association called for an “entire overhaul” of the sentencing calculation and discharging process and warned Lammy not to seek to blame individual officers for systemic failures.

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2025/nov/05/police-urgently-looking-for-prisoner-freed-by-mistake-in-london

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Twelve more prisoners released in error, with two still missing, says Lammy



Justice Secretary David Lammy has said 12 prisoners have been accidentally released in the past three weeks, two of whom are still at large.

It comes on top of the 91 prisoners who were freed by mistake between April and October in England and Wales.

Speaking to the BBC, Lammy said there would always be a "human error" while prisons were using a paper-based system and that the situation would improve once a "completely digital system" was adopted.

He said there had been "a spike" in accidental releases but added it was now on "a downward trajectory".

Speaking to ITV later, Lammy said he had been "reassured" that the two prisoners at large were not violent or sex offenders.

"I'm not going to give details of those cases, because these are operational decisions made by the police, and you'll understand if they're about to arrest somebody they don't want me to blow the cover," he added.

The subject of accidental releases gained attention after Hadush Kebatu, who was jailed after sexually assaulting a 14-year-old girl and a woman while living in an asylum hotel in Epping, was mistakenly freed.

Kebatu was re-arrested two days after his release and has now been deported to Ethiopia.

Shortly after Kebatu's release, news emerged of two other prisoners who had been released in error - William Smith, who later handed himself in, and Brahim Kaddour-Cherif, who was rearrested.

The cases led to the government implementing new security measures including a "clear checklist" for prison governors to follow when releasing prisoners.

The latest releases happened since 11 November, when Lammy gave a statement to the House of Commons, outlining the steps the government was taking to resolve the issue.

The number of prisoners who have been let out in error rose by 128% last year, increasing from 115 in 2023-2024 to 262 in the following year.

There were just over 57,000 releases of prisoners who had finished the custodial part of their sentences in England and Wales in 2024-25 - a rise of about 13% on the year before.

The figures on mistaken releases include cases where individuals were released either too early or too late.

Lammy acknowledged there had been a rise in numbers adding: "I want to bring it down but we have got a mountain to climb."

He said the problem had been partly caused by the system losing 6,000 officers under the previous Conservative government.

Shadow justice secretary Robert Jenrick has previously blamed the increase on "the confusion created by Labour's botched early release scheme", a project introduced by the government to ease overcrowding in prisons.

Responding to the news of the 12 new prisoner releases, he said "The public are consistently being put at risk because of his shambolic management. When will this fiasco end?"

Liberal Democrat spokeswoman Jess Brown-Fuller said: "It's utterly unacceptable that public safety has been put at risk yet again - both the government and the prison service must own up to their failures and guarantee that these mistakes will stop happening once and for all."

Charlie Taylor, chief inspector of prisons, has said the rising number of mistaken releases was evidence that "something is going badly wrong" with the prison system.

Speaking to the BBC in October, he said mistakes partly occurred because "inexperienced" staff were having to deal with "huge caseloads".

He added that prisons were having to adapt to different policies including various early release schemes introduced both by the previous Conservative government and the current Labour one.