Met arrests Epping asylum seeker released from prison by accident

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Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer has vowed to deport Haddush Kibato after the Metropolitan Police arrested an Epping immigrant whose accidental release from prison on Friday sparked a two-day manhunt.

Kibato, whose crimes sparked nationwide protests this summer against hotels housing asylum seekers, was arrested at around 8.30am in the Finsbury Park area of ​​north London, police said on Sunday.

In September, the Ethiopian national, who was previously staying at the Belle Hotel in Epping, was sentenced to a year in prison for sexually assaulting a 14-year-old girl and a woman.

He was due to be transferred from HMP Chelmsford to an immigration detention center on Friday. Instead, prison staff released the 41-year-old, who then boarded a train to London.

The incident has raised questions about the government’s grip on prisons, which are close to full capacity, and immigration, with asylum hotels rising on the political agenda in recent months.

Official data showed this week that the number of small boat crossings so far this year has surpassed the total in 2024, while the Home Office confirmed that an Iranian national deported to France under the UK’s landmark ‘one in, one out’ scheme had secretly returned to Britain.

Starmer said on social media platform “We have to make sure this doesn’t happen again,” he added.

But Zia Yusuf, head of policy at Reform Britain, the political party leading the polls, said reports that eyewitnesses saw staff reject Kibato on Friday as he tried to return to prison showed Britain had “descended into a Monty Python sketch”.

“I’m shocked. How any victim of sexual assault can look at the current government and have any degree of trust is beyond me,” he told Sky News, referring to separate infighting affecting the national investigation into grooming gangs.

Meanwhile, Chris Philp, the Conservative shadow home secretary, said Kibato’s return to custody was “welcome”, but warned that ministers had “lost control of our borders”.

In her call for a national inquiry, Mary Goldman, the Liberal Democrat MP for Chelmsford, said the action taken by the Metropolitan Police on Sunday “does not excuse the serious errors that allowed this to happen in the first place”.

“The prison service had several opportunities to fix the matter and failed,” she said in a statement.

The Prison Service did not immediately comment on Sunday.

She said on Friday she was working with police to return the offender to prison after the incident at Chelmsford Prison. She added that an officer had been “removed from performing his duties” while the investigation was being conducted.