Sex offender freed in error 'kept going back in prison'

A migrant sex offender who was mistakenly released from prison was seen by a delivery driver “returning four or five times” to the reception, as he hung around outside for around “an hour and a half”.

- ATHENA STAVROU

Hadush Kebatu was jailed for 12 months last month for sexually assaulting a 14-year-old girl and another woman. The former asylum seeker, who had been living at the Bell Hotel in Epping, Essex, was due to be deported, but on Friday he was released from HMP Chelmsford by error.

The Met Police is leading the search for the 38-year-old, with detectives saying that he made several train journeys in London, before getting off at Stratford, the UK's fifth busiest railway station, at 1.10pm on Friday.

Yesterday, as a police chief made a direct appeal to Kebatu, an interview was aired by Sky News with a delivery driver who said he spoke to him while delivering a fridge at the time of his release.

The driver, Sim, said Kebatu knew he was supposed to be deported and kept asking prison staff "what to do", returning to the prison reception "four or five times".

“He came out of the airlock, and kept saying to the officers there, 'Where am I going? What am I doing? I don't know where I'm going and what I'm doing,'” Sim told Sky News.