An Algerian man has been mistakenly released from prison in London, police have said.
A Met Police spokesperson said officers were carrying out “urgent enquiries” to locate the 24-year-old man, who was released in error from HMP Wandsworth last Wednesday.
It comes after migrant sex offender Hadush Kebatu was also released from prison by mistake last month.
The Ethiopian national, who arrived in the UK on a small boat, was jailed for sexually assaulting a 14-year-old girl and a woman while living in an asylum hotel in Epping, Essex.
During Prime Minister’s Questions Justice Secretary David Lammy, who was standing in for Sir Keir Starmer, was repeatedly asked whether any other asylum-seeking offender had been accidentally let out of prison since Kebatu was released but refused to answer.
Shortly after PMQs ended, the Met Police released a statement revealing another foreign prisoner had been released by mistake last Wednesday, with the force informed on Tuesday.
Shadow defence secretary James Cartlidge, who was deputising for Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch, asked the same question four times during PMQs but Lammy repeatedly avoided answering.
Instead, he attacked the Conservative Party’s record in government, telling Cartlidge: “Let me just remind him that he was a justice minister that allowed our prisons to get to this state in the first place and it’s now for us to fix the mess that we’ve got into.”
He added: “Their criminal negligence, on his watch as a former justice minister, they left our prisons on the brink of collapse entirely, threatening to allow offenders to run wild on our streets.”
At the end of the session, Cartlidge revealed the Telegraph newspaper was reporting another foreign offender had been mistakenly released from prison.
A Met Police spokesperson said: “Shortly after 13:00hrs 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.
“The prisoner is a 24-year-old Algerian man.
“Officers are carrying out urgent enquiries in an effort to locate him and return him to custody.”
Reacting to the news, Transport Secretary Heidi Alexander told the BBC’s Politics Live programme: “One release in error is one too many, and I understand why people will be concerned about this.
“I would expect the Metropolitan Police to be conducting a manhunt at the moment, frankly, to find this individual, because they shouldn’t be at large.”
She added: “I suspect that after Prime Minister’s Questions, David Lammy will be going straight back to the Ministry of Justice, and asking some very tough questions indeed of his officials about what has happened.”
The prime minister’s spokesman said: “We completely accept that this type of case is utterly unacceptable and needs to be dealt with, and the system needs to be reformed and the appropriate checks need to be in place to stop this type of thing from ever happening.”
He added that the government had inherited a prison system “in chaos” and there was “no overnight fix”.
Asked repeatedly, he was unable to say whether Lammy was aware of the prisoner release during PMQs.
Some 262 prisoners in England and Wales were mistakenly released in the year leading up to March 2025, according to the latest figures, up 128% from 115 the previous year.
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Published on: 2025-11-05 18:39:00
Source: www.bbc.com