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This year, almost 100 violent and sexual offenders are among the 262 prisoners who have been mistakenly released

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This year, almost 100 violent and sexual offenders are among the 262 prisoners who have been mistakenly released
This year, almost 100 violent and sexual offenders are among the 262 prisoners who have been mistakenly released

Four more prisoners are at large after being mistakenly released from jail, LBC understands.

It is reported the four "at large" form part of the 262 prisoners in England and Wales who were mistakenly released in the year to March 2025. 

Of the total, 90 releases in error were of violent or sex offenders.

The revelation comes just hours after Algerian national Kaddour-Cherif, 24, was arrested more than a week after the blunder which saw him released from HMP Wandsworth in London.

The Metropolitan Police said he was detained after he was spotted by a member of the public in Finsbury Park, north London, just before 11:30 am on Friday.

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Kaddour-Cherif was accidentally freed on October 29, but police were only informed of the mistake on Tuesday, prompting a high-profile manhunt.

Four more prisoners released in error are still at large, LBC understands.

Two of the prisoners are still at large after being mistakenly freed in 2024.

While the other two, who were reportedly set free in error in June 2025, also remain missing.

Details of the four mistakenly released prisoners are emerging as ministers face mounting pressure.

Earlier this week, 35-year-old William Smith was also wrongly let out of the same prison but later handed himself back in.

It comes as Justice Secretary and Deputy Prime Minister, David Lammy faced mounting pressure by other MPs.

Liberal Democrat MP Ben Maguire told LBC News: "The government have been in power now for 15 months, so it is getting a bit boring just hearing the previous government get blamed for this."

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He continued: "It seems to be happening on a daily basis and the government just aren’t really giving it the attention and ultimately the funding that it deserves.

"I have a tiny amount of sympathy in the fact that he has been only in the job for a few weeks."

Dame Anne Owers, Formerly Her Majesty’s Chief Inspector of Prisons, who led the Independent Review of Prison Capacity which was published this summer, told LBC: "Prisons lost a lot of staff under austerity and they’ve taken on new staff but in one local prison I went to, there were 60% of the staff who were within their first two years, now, that’s a lot of loss of experience.

"It’s particularly difficult in London prisons to recruit so that you’ve got this potentially really problematic combination of too many prisoners and too few staff with limited experience."

Deputy Prime Minister David Lammy has faced growing pressure over the scandal.

She continued: "I think one of the problems is the complicated systems of early release and everything else that we’ve got, including, of course, connections with the Home Office for those who would otherwise be deported.

"One person I was talking to in prisons talked about 100 different checks they needed to do for prisoners being released and said to me, we’re waiting for the headline."

"So, continually changing systems, making systems more complicated is adding to the possibilities, but you’re also right that it needs more and experienced staff and it needs a system which isn’t constantly working in crisis mode."

Mr Lammy said on Thursday that engineers, analysts and designers will be sent into prisons "within 48 hours" to roll out technology aimed at reducing human error and modernizing the "paper-based" processes that have led to mistaken releases.

Mr 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.”

Shadow home secretary Chris Philp said Kaddour-Cherif must be immediately deported as soon as his sentence is finished.

He added: “The British public shouldn’t have to be the ones to catch escaped criminals.

“This is chaos, incompetence and weakness from top to bottom, and it’s putting people’s safety at risk.”

Algerian Nadjib Mekdhia, 50, who is homeless but stays in the Finsbury Park area of north London, who called police on Brahim Kaddour-Cherif.

Algerian Nadjib Mekdhia, 50, who is homeless but stays in the Finsbury Park area of north London, who called police on Brahim Kaddour-Cherif. 

Kaddour-Cherif said it was not his fault as he was arrested by Metropolitan Police officers in north London following his mistaken release from prison.

Footage of the 24-year-old’s arrest showed him initially standing by the passenger window of a police van before officers arrested him.

Wearing a grey hoodie, black beanie and black backpack, he denied that he was “Brahim” and, when asked if he knew him, said: “Everyone knows him, he’s in (the) news.”

Police brought him to the back of the van and held up an image of Kaddour-Cherif next to his face before un-cuffing and re-cuffing his hands behind his back.

Officers searched his backpack and found a laptop, umbrella and wallet.

Before he was put in the back of the van, he turned to those gathered and said: “Look at the justice of the UK, they release people by mistake, after this they ‘ah ah ah’, it’s not my f****** fault.”

Algerian Nadjib Mekdhia, 50, who is homeless but stays in the Finsbury Park area of north London, said he was walking past a cafe on Blackstock Road on Friday morning when he saw Kaddour-Cherif and called the police.

The scandal started last month after Epping migrant and sex offender Hadush Kebatu was wrongly freed from HMP Chelmsford, instead of being sent to an immigration detention centre to be deported.

He was located and arrested in London two days later.

The error brought to light concerns over the rising number of prisoners released in error, as the latest Government figures show 262 prisoners were released in error in the year to March 2025 - a 128% increase on 115 in the previous 12 months.

HMP Wandsworth, where inmates Brahim Kaddour-Cherif and William Smith were freed from this week.

HMP Wandsworth, where inmates Brahim Kaddour-Cherif and William Smith were freed from this week.

The Prison Governors Association described releases in error as "neither rare nor hidden," but said on Thursday the scale was "deeply concerning."

Mr Lammy had confirmed on October 27 that stronger release checks would come into force immediately, two days before Kaddour-Cherif was released.

The Tories accused him of potentially misleading the public.

Shadow justice secretary Robert Jenrick said: "David Lammy has either lied or has absolutely no clue what’s going on in his department.

"How can the public have confidence in the Justice Secretary when he can’t establish a timeline of events or answer basic questions?"

A spokesperson for the Ministry of Justice said: "The vast majority of offenders released by mistake are quickly brought back to prison, and we will do everything we can to work with the police to capture the few still in the community.

"These cases only further expose the scale of the crisis in our prisons we inherited. This will not be fixed overnight, but we are using every possible lever to bear down on these errors." 

James Turner

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