On Friday, October 24, 2025, a grave error at HMP Chelmsford in Essex set off a national manhunt and ignited fierce debate over the state of the UK’s prison and immigration systems. Hadush Kebatu, a convicted sex offender and asylum seeker from Ethiopia, was mistakenly released from custody when he should have been transferred to an immigration detention centre for deportation. Instead, Kebatu, who had been sentenced in September to 12 months in prison for sexually assaulting a 14-year-old girl and a woman in Epping, Essex, was led out of the prison gates and directed towards the local train station.
According to BBC reporting, prison staff escorted Kebatu away from HMP Chelmsford and towards the station, where he boarded a London-bound train at 12:41 BST. The Metropolitan Police and Essex Police quickly launched a manhunt, but as of more than 30 hours after his release, Kebatu’s last confirmed sighting was at Stratford station in east London. Police believe he made several train journeys across the capital, sought assistance from members of the public and station staff, and had access to personal funds returned to him upon leaving prison.
The blunder has not only left residents of Chelmsford and London on edge, but also exposed deep cracks in the UK’s criminal justice and immigration enforcement systems. As the search for Kebatu intensified, Chelmsford MP Marie Goldman called the accidental release a “mind-blowing” blunder, telling BBC News, “My mind has blown. How this could possibly happen?” She demanded a “full and rapid” public inquiry into the mistake and insisted that “we need to make sure that it not only never happens again in Chelmsford, but that it doesn’t happen anywhere in the country.”
Kebatu’s case has been fraught from the start. Arriving in the UK on June 29, 2024, after a perilous journey through Sudan, Libya, Italy, and France, he was living at The Bell Hotel in Epping while seeking asylum. His arrest in July 2025, following incidents where he made sexually explicit remarks to a 14-year-old girl and assaulted both her and a woman, sparked protests outside the hotel. He denied the charges at his trial in August, telling the court, “I’m not a wild animal.” Nonetheless, on September 4, 2025, he was found guilty of two counts of sexual assault, one count of attempted sexual assault, one count of inciting a girl to engage in sexual activity, and one count of harassment without violence.
At sentencing, District Judge Williams imposed a five-year Sexual Harm Prevention Order, stating, “There is a significant risk of you committing a further sexual offence and the lack of any explanation for your behaviour suggests not only that you pose a risk, but that your behaviour is unpredictable.” Kebatu was also ordered to sign the Sex Offenders’ Register for 10 years and was told he faced deportation under the UK Borders Act 2007, which mandates deportation for foreign nationals sentenced to at least 12 months in prison.
But on October 24, 2025, instead of being transferred to an immigration facility, Kebatu was released in error. News of the mistake quickly reverberated through Chelmsford. Kerry Smith, a local shop manager, described her shock to the BBC: “We trust the system, so it’s quite a shock this person has the ability to walk among us with us not even realising.” Another resident told reporters, “He certainly wasn’t hiding. He was holding a bag of belongings and not exactly wearing arrows on his top.”
The Prison Service acknowledged the error, stating it was “urgently working” with police to return Kebatu to custody and that “public protection is our top priority.” Yet the blunder has raised urgent questions about systemic failures. BBC sources confirmed that prison staff had led Kebatu away from the prison and towards the station, with reports that he may have even tried to return to the prison but was turned away by staff. A prison officer has since been suspended over the incident.
The numbers point to a broader crisis. According to the prison service’s annual digest, 262 prisoners in England and Wales were mistakenly released in the year leading up to March 2025—a 128% increase from the previous year’s 115. Of these, 233 were released from prisons and 29 by courts. The service attributes the spike to “a range of operational and legislative changes.” Shabnam Chaudhri, a former detective superintendent, told the BBC, “Unfortunately, people will be surprised to know that actually this is quite common... The mountain of paperwork that ends up being dealt with is quite staggering really.” She argued the root cause lies in “systems and processes and policies that are just clearly not working very well.”
Political leaders from across the spectrum have expressed outrage. Justice Secretary David Lammy said he was “appalled” and “livid on behalf of the public,” while Labour Party leader Sir Keir Starmer called the release “totally unacceptable.” Stephen Robinson, the Liberal Democrat leader of Chelmsford City Council, insisted, “Chelmsford prison is used to handling people who are coming and going because it’s mainly a remand centre, and so they should be used to dealing with this.” Conservative MP for Epping, Neil Hudson, told BBC Radio 4 that “the buck has to stop somewhere and it has to stop at the top, at the justice secretary, the home secretary and the prime minister.”
Meanwhile, police efforts have been relentless. Essex Police said the search for Kebatu was “continuing at pace,” with officers working “throughout the night to track his movements, including scouring hours of CCTV footage.” The Metropolitan Police made a direct appeal to Kebatu, reminding him that during his sentencing, his “firm wish is to be deported as soon as possible,” as stated by his defense barrister Molly Dyas. Commander James Conway called on Kebatu to turn himself in, saying, “We want to locate you in a safe and controlled way... The best outcome for you is to make contact directly with us by either calling 999 or reporting yourself to a police station.”
HMP Chelmsford, where the incident unfolded, is a Category B men’s prison housing around 750 inmates. The institution has faced considerable pressures due to national capacity issues and staff shortages, as highlighted in its most recent inspection report. John Podmore, former governor of several UK prisons, told the BBC, “There are operational failures... but they’ve been around for a long period of time.” He described Kebatu’s mistaken release as “one symptom” of wider problems, warning, “We’re going to have to get used to it.”
As the manhunt continues, the case of Hadush Kebatu stands as a stark reminder of the human cost of bureaucratic errors and the urgent need for reform in the UK’s justice and immigration systems. For many in Chelmsford and beyond, the question remains: how could such a mistake happen—and what will it take to ensure it never happens again?
