A sex offender mistakenly freed from a London prison has been arrested after a week-long manhunt. Brahim Kaddour-Cherif, 24, was detained in Islington on Friday morning after a member of the public spotted him and alerted police.
The Metropolitan Police confirmed they arrested the Algerian national at 11:30 AM near Capital City College on Blackstock Road. Officers responded immediately after receiving the tip-off seven minutes earlier. Kaddour-Cherif was taken into custody and faces charges for being unlawfully at large, as well as suspicion of assaulting an emergency worker in an unrelated incident.
Kaddour-Cherif had been mistakenly released from HMP Wandsworth on October 29. He was serving time for trespass with intent to steal and had a prior conviction for indecent exposure that placed him on the sex offender registry for five years. Authorities did not notify police of the error until November 4, nearly a week after his release. He is not an asylum seeker but faces deportation for overstaying his visa.
Mounting Pressure on Justice Secretary
The arrest intensifies scrutiny on Justice Secretary David Lammy, who confirmed the recapture. «I'm appalled at the rate of releases in error this is causing», Lammy said. «We inherited a prison system in crisis and I'm determined to grip this problem, but there is a mountain to climb which cannot be done overnight.»
Lammy announced sweeping reforms including tougher release checks, an independent investigation into systemic failures, and digitization of what he called «archaic paper-based systems» still used in some prisons. Housing Secretary Steve Reed defended the response, telling Times Radio: «The problem is we've got a broken system, and you are going to see failings when you have a broken system.»
Pattern of Prison Errors
Kaddour-Cherif's case is part of a troubling pattern of mistaken releases. Billy Smith, another prisoner, was wrongly freed from HMP Wandsworth on November 3 and later surrendered. In October, sex offender Hadush Kebatu was accidentally released from HMP Chelmsford and remained at large for three days before being deported.
Official figures show 262 inmates were mistakenly released in the year to March 2025, a 128% increase from the previous year. Ninety of those released were violent or sex offenders. A separate manhunt continues for Ola Abimbola, who escaped from open prison HMP Ford on October 16 while serving 21 years for kidnapping and grievous bodily harm.
Note: This article was created with Artificial Intelligence (AI).
