The sex offender mistakenly released from prison last week was arrested by police in London on Friday after being spotted by a member of the public – as justice secretary David Lammy admitted there was a “mountain to climb” to tackle prison system crisis.
Brahim Kaddour-Cherif, 24, was serving a sentence at HMP Wandsworth in southwest London when he was set free on 29 October, sparking a nine-day manhunt. The Algerian national was arrested in Islington.
Kaddour-Cherif has convictions for theft and had previously also been convicted for indecent exposure.
The release, as well as that of fraudster Billy Smith, 35, who handed himself in on Thursday, has piled pressure on Mr Lammy. On Friday night, reports emerged that four more prisoners released in error are still at large. It is understood they form part of the 262 prisoners in England and Wales who were mistakenly released in the year to March 2025.
Earlier on Friday, during his arrest, Kaddour-Cherif tried to claim he was somebody else. The officer said: “We are just going to do some further checks because you look exactly like the person. I’ve had a look at the photo, you’ve got a very distinctive wonky nose which looks the same as the person.”
Nadjib Mekdhia, who is also Algerian, claimed he called the police after spotting Kaddour-Cherif and said he is “glad he is in prison”.
Mr Mekdhia, 50, who is homeless and stays in the Finsbury Park area of north London, said he recognised the prisoner from a newspaper photograph.
Mr Lammy said: “I can confirm Brahim Kaddour-Cherif has been recaptured and is back in custody. My thanks are with the police and staff at HMPPS who have been working around the clock.
“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.”
It comes after migrant Hadush Kebatu was wrongly released from HMP Chelmsford on 24 October. Stronger security checks were put in place in prisons and an independent investigation was launched into releases in error following the blunder in Kebatu’s case.
The Epping migrant jailed for sexually assaulting a 14-year-old girl and a woman, which sparked a wave of protests, was accidentally freed from prison instead of being sent to an immigration detention centre last month. He was later traced.
Shortly before news of the latest incident broke, Mr Lammy had been asked in the House of Commons whether any more asylum seekers had been wrongly released since Kebatu. The deputy prime minister, who also serves as justice secretary, refused to confirm the question when asked four times.
It is understood Kaddour-Cherif is not an asylum seeker, but is in the process of being deported after he overstayed his visa.
The latest blunders were blamed on clerical errors in a system under “relentless strain”.
Housing secretary Steve Reed told Times Radio: “The problem is we’ve got a broken system, and you are going to see failings when you have a broken system.
“The key is to make sure we have a digital system so that no prisoner is ever released by mistake.
“There is not an acceptable number for this, but the way to fix it is not tittle tattle about David Lammy in the newspapers, it’s to get on and do the work and put in the investment that will digitise the system.
“David has already had the prison governors in his office yesterday, I imagine they felt pretty hauled over the coals given what’s been going on, but he was also making sure that they’re getting all the support they need to carry out the much tougher checks that will be required to make sure that the repeats of this are at an absolute minimum.”
Chris Philp MP, shadow home secretary, said: “This case sums up the total collapse of law and order under Calamity Lammy. A foreign sex offender, meant to be deported, strolling the streets of London because Labour can’t even keep track of its prisoners. He must be immediately deported as soon as his sentence is finished.
“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.
“Labour don’t have the backbone to get a grip of law and order. Only the Conservative Party has a common sense, hard-edged plan to restore order, put 10,000 extra police officers on our streets and put fear back where it belongs – in the minds of criminals.”