LONDON: UK police arrested Ethiopian asylum-seeker and convicted sex offender Hadush Kebatu on Sunday after officials mistakenly released him from prison in a serious error.
Nearly 48 hours prior, the London Metropolitan Police apprehended Kebatu in north London, having been tipped off that he was at a bus stop in the Finsbury Park area and later found inside the park.
“Kebatu would now be deported,” Prime Minister Keir Starmer said on X, adding: “We have ordered an investigation to establish what went wrong. We must make sure this doesn’t happen again.”
The 38-year-old had served the first month of a one-year sentence for sexually assaulting a teenage girl and a woman. He was reportedly due for deportation when a Prison Service error led to his release on Friday. Kebatu’s case earlier this year in Epping, northeast of London, had triggered anti-immigration protests in towns across England, where asylum-seekers were believed to be housed, along with counter-protests.
According to reports, Kebatu had been wrongly categorized for release on license and handed a £76 ($100) discharge grant. Officers had issued an appeal on Saturday for him to turn himself in after witnesses described him as “very confused” and reluctant to leave Chelmsford prison.
A delivery driver who saw Kebatu outside the jail told Sky News: “He was starting to get upset, he was getting stressed.”
The father of Kebatu’s teenage victim said the mistaken release demonstrated that “the justice system has let us down.” Kebatu was originally arrested in July after repeatedly attempting to kiss a 14-year-old girl, making sexually explicit comments, and later touching the thigh of an adult woman who intervened. At the time, he was staying at the Bell Hotel in Epping, a facility used to house asylum-seekers and the focus of repeated protests.
