Police recapture Hadush Kebatu after “unbelievably irresponsible” release
Convicted sex offender Hadush Kebatu will be deported from the United Kingdom after police finally caught him sitting on a bench in a north London park.
The former asylum seeker was wrongly set free when he was due to be sent to an immigration detention centre to be deported on Friday.
He was arrested in Finsbury Park, north London this morning after someone saw him at a bus stop and called police.
Speaking from Wood Green police station, Justice Secretary David Lammy said a member of staff had been suspended.
He criticized Kebatu’s "unacceptable" premature release but insisted Kebatu’s victims were kept up to date over the 48-hour manhunt.
"I can assure you that he will be deported as he was expecting to be deported. I expect that to happen this week," Lammy says, stressing that Kebatu must first be questioned by police over his movements since Friday.
The father of Kebatu’s teenage victim said he hopes the sex offender will be "deported immediately."
In a statement, the father said the news of Kebatu’s release caused his daughter "so much stress and anxiety."
He added: "This man is a real danger to young women and children and for him to be wrongly released and walking the streets freely just four months after carrying out two sexual assaults, only five weeks after being sentenced, all because of a system failure on Friday is unbelievably irresponsible."
New pictures show the moment he is led away from the bench area in the popular park.
The officers caught up to him as he sat on a bench.
He was led away from the scene and loaded into a police van.
Eyewitness Jack Neill-Hall, 40, said: "I knew that he’d last been seen in the Hackney area and I thought ’oh, that looks awfully like that guy, he’s not wearing the same clothes but it looks like him’."
"He wasn’t struggling, he was walking quite calmly, a bit dejectedly, he was staring down, he had his hood up, but it was a calm situation."
"It was a leisurely stroll out of the park with him with his hands cuffed but he wasn’t trying to get away."
Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer said: "Hadush Kebatu has been arrested and will be deported.
"Officers have worked quickly and diligently to bring him back into custody.
"We have ordered an investigation to establish what went wrong. We must make sure this doesn’t happen again."
Kebatu became one of the country’s highest-profile sex offenders after reports of his crimes sparked protests at the Bell Hotel in Epping, where he was staying while seeking asylum after arriving in the UK by small boat.
The Ethiopian national told two teenagers he wanted to "have a baby with each of them" before trying to kiss them, putting his hand on one of the girls’ thighs and stroking her hair.
He also sexually assaulted a woman by trying to kiss her, putting his hand on her leg and telling her she was pretty.
Kebatu had reportedly tried to return to prison himself because he knew there had been an error, but was repeatedly turned away.
A delivery driver, named as Sim, told Sky News that he saw Kebatu loitering outside the prison for over an hour, as he was confused about where he should go, returning "four or five times."
He claimed prison staff were "basically sending him away" and saying to him: "Go, you’ve been released, you go."
Before his arrest this morning, he had been seen at a library in Dalston, with CCTV footage showing him still in his prison tracksuit, carrying his belongings in a white bag with avocados on it.
Kebatu’s crimes became known nationwide after they prompted a wave of protests outside asylum hotels. Demonstrators began to gather outside the hotel where he was staying in August, and protests spread to other hotels housing migrants.
The local council sought an injunction trying to ban the Bell Hotel from being used to house asylum seekers – but this was overturned after the government appealed.
Kebatu’s release caused major embarrassment for the government, with Justice Secretary David Lammy saying he was "livid" on behalf of the public over the error.
Head of Investigations
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