Algerian man mistakenly released from HMP Wandsworth arrested

An Algerian sex offender who was mistakenly released from prison has been arrested by police.

Brahim Kaddour-Cherif, 24, was spotted by a member of the public in the Finsbury Park area of London just before 11:30 GMT on Friday.

He had been let out of HMP Wandsworth in south London on 29 October. Police said they were not told about the mistake until Tuesday 4 November.

Kaddour-Cherif was one of two men separately released by mistake from the prison in the same week. Both are now back in custody, after William Smith handed himself in on Thursday.

The Algerian national was convicted of indecent exposure in November 2024, relating to an incident in March of that year.

He was given an 18-month community order and placed on the sex offenders’ register for five years.

At least four other prisoners released in error are still at large, the BBC has been told.

Some 262 prisoners in England and Wales were mistakenly released in the year to March – up from 115 the previous year.

The unaccounted prisoners reveal “the incompetence of this government”, shadow justice secretary Robert Jenrick said.

“It shouldn’t be left to reporters to uncover the facts. [Justice Secretary] David Lammy must finally come clean about how many prisoners have been accidentally released and how many are still at large.”

“Every resource” must go into finding the prisoners, a spokesperson for the Liberal Democrats said.

“This is a disgrace and an omnishambles. It shouldn’t have to take the media to inform the public that prisoners are at large after accidental release,” Jess Brown-Fuller said.

The Metropolitan Police said Kaddour-Cherif was spotted by a member of the public near Capital City College on Blackstock Road.

Officers responded “immediately” and he was arrested at 11:30, the force added.

He was arrested for being unlawfully at large and on suspicion of assaulting an emergency worker in relation to a previous incident.

Before he was put in a police van, he turned to those gathered and said: “Look at the justice of the UK, they release people by mistake … it’s not my fault.”

Algerian Nadjib Mekdhia, 50, who is homeless but stays in Finsbury Park, said he was walking past a cafe on Blackstock Road when he spotted Kaddour-Cherif.

“I was by the Algerian cafe. The individual approached to me. I don’t know what he was doing. I recognised him. I asked a member of the public to give me a phone.

“Straight away I called the police. The police vans came quickly.”

He added: “I am glad he is in prison. We do not need people like that in our community.

“I am proud Algerian. I am proud British. We do the right thing.”

Deelo Morgenegg, who witnessed the arrest, told the BBC he saw an “altercation” between Kaddour-Cherif and a person who may have recognised the mistakenly released prisoner.

Police then came over and questioned him, he said, adding: “Things started to escalate and then eventually they handcuffed him”.

When Kaddour-Cherif was placed in the police van “he started kicking the van and kind of shaking about and stomping”, Mr Morgenegg said.

Kaddour-Cherif is understood to have entered the UK legally on a visitor’s visa in 2019, but overstayed that and was in the initial stages of the deportation process.

He was released the day after being found not guilty of breaching the sex offenders’ register’s requirements – but he was still facing other charges and should have remained in custody.

The prison officers’ representatives said a clerical error meant there was no warrant from the court to hold him, and he was let go.

It followed a series of prosecutions and court appearances dating back two years.

William Smith, the second man released from HMP Wandsworth in the past week, handed himself back in on Thursday. He was let go on Monday having been sentenced to prison earlier that day.

Their releases came just weeks after migrant sex offender Hadush Kebatu, who arrived in the UK on a small boat, was mistakenly released from HMP Chelmsford in Essex in late October.

Sources have told the BBC that Wandsworth prison’s governor was not at the jail on the day Kaddour-Cherif was released because he was carrying out the inquiry into how Kebatu was let go.

The inmate was caught just a three-minute walk from where Kebatu was re-arrested.

In a statement after Friday’s arrest, Lammy said: “We inherited a prison system in crisis and I’m appalled at the rate of releases in error this is causing.

“I’m determined to grip this problem, but there is a mountain to climb which cannot be done overnight.

“That is why I have ordered new tough release checks, commissioned an independent investigation into systemic failures, and begun overhauling archaic paper-based systems still used in some prisons.”

Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch said Lammy “doesn’t know what he’s doing”.

Reacting to footage of Kaddour-Cherif’s arrest, she added: “These people are making a mockery of our justice system. They clearly feel that the UK is a soft touch and the government needs to get a grip.

“I thought it was also extraordinary that he was just wandering around just outside the justice secretary’s own constituency. They are laughing at us and what the Labour government needs to do is show that it will enforce our laws.”

Lammy has come under fire over the mistaken releases, after he promised the “strongest checks ever” to prevent similar errors following the Kebatu case.

The new checks entail more responsibility for the duty governor, who is in charge of prison security. They will now have to oversee the release of all inmates – completing more checks and calculations, as well as filling out further paperwork.

But these checks are proving to be a “significant burden”, according to one senior prison staffer, who said “they’ve only increased the paperwork”.

“It’s now taking a day in some cases to complete the checks to release someone and this isn’t helpful when staffing is an issue,” they said.

Prisons have been in a state of crisis for several years. The population has continued to balloon, with the number of staff not keeping pace with the number of inmates.

Only a hundred or so places were available in male prisons last summer. This triggered the government’s emergency release scheme – where some inmates would be freed after serving 40% of their fixed term sentence, rather than the usual 50%. It was implemented to reduce overcrowding and already almost 40,000 inmates have been let out under the scheme.

But this has also had repercussions on the number of mistaken releases.

The government has pledged to build more prisons to ease overcrowding, with projections showing the prison population will continue to grow. But this will take time and isn’t an instant solution.

Additional reporting by Theo Whyte and Alex Forster