Essex PoliceThe accidental release of an asylum seeker from prison was a “mind-blowing” blunder, an MP said.
Hadush Kebatu was serving a 12-month sentence at HMP Chelmsford after being convicted of sexually assaulting a girl and a woman in Epping, Essex, in July.
But he was mistakenly set free from the prison on Friday and instead of a planned deportation, the Ethiopian national boarded a London-bound train.
Chelmsford MP Marie Goldman said: “My mind has blown. How this could possibly happen?”
Kebatu’s arrest in July sparked protests outside The Bell Hotel in Epping, where he had been living after arriving in the UK on a small boat just days before.
He was jailed for 12 months at Chelmsford Magistrates’ Court in September.
A national manhunt has been ongoing for the 41-year-old, who claims to be 38 and was last seen wearing a grey tracksuit in the city centre.
He boarded a train at Chelmsford station at 12:41 BST after what Essex Police described as “an error” by the Prison Service.
A spokesperson for the Prison Service said it was “urgently working” with police to return Kebatu to custody, adding: “Public protection is our top priority.”
On Saturday, Essex Police said the search for Kebatu was “continuing at pace”.
The force said officers had worked “throughout the night to track his movements, including scouring hours of CCTV footage”.
A statement added: “It is not lost on us that this situation is concerning to people, and we are committed to locating and arresting him as quickly as possible.”
In Chelmsford city centre, some Saturday shoppers expressed surprise Kebatu had been spotted there.
Jamie Hall, 34, said he saw the video online and instantly recognised his local High Street.
“You don’t expect somewhere so close to home to suddenly be on the front of all the newspapers,” he said
Kerry Smith, who manages a High Street shop, said it was “scary” how close she came to sex offender Kebatu.
“We trust the system, so it’s quite a shock this person has the ability to walk among us with us not even realising,” she said.
Lewis Adams/Another couple shopping in the city said: “He certainly wasn’t hiding. He was holding a bag of belongings and not exactly wearing arrows on his top.”
Her partner added: “Clearly someone has made a terrible mistake and I’m sure they’re not feeling too good about it today.”
Meanwhile, Goldman, the city’s Liberal Democrat MP, said: “It is obvious something has gone terribly, terribly wrong and we really need to understand what went wrong.
“Crucially, we need to understand how to fix it.”
She called for a “full and rapid” public inquiry into the mistake and said Essex Police should be given all the resources they needed to find Kebatu.
“We need to make sure that it not only never happens again in Chelmsford, but that it doesn’t happen anywhere in the country,” she added.
“I just don’t understand how this could possibly happen.”
Kebatu was meant to be transported to an immigration detention centre on Friday ahead of his deportation.
It is not clear where he was being deported to but under the UK Borders Act 2007, a deportation order must be made where a foreign national has been convicted of an offence and has received a custodial sentence of at least 12 months.
PA MediaStephen Robinson, the Liberal Democrat leader of Chelmsford City Council, said Kebatu must be located and deported “as soon as possible”.
“This is outrageous,” he told Breakfast.
“Chelmsford prison is used to handling people who are coming and going because it’s mainly a remand centre, and so they should be used to dealing with this.”
Kebatu was arrested on 8 July and released in error 108 days later.
Justice Secretary David Lammy said he was “appalled” and “livid on behalf of the public”, while Sir Keir Starmer described the release as “totally unacceptable”.
Neil Hudson, the Conservative MP for Epping, was one of the first politicians to publicly call for a full closure of The Bell Hotel in July.
On the Kebatu error, he told Radio 4’s Today programme: “The buck has to stop somewhere and it has to stop at the top, at the justice secretary, the home secretary and the prime minister.”