Epping migrant sex offender last seen in London, police say
The Metropolitan Police have taken over the manhunt for a migrant sex offenders who was mistakenly released from a jail in Essex on Friday and travelled to east London. Hadush Kebatu was released in error weeks after being arrested for sexually assaulting a 14-year-old girl and a woman in Epping, Essex, while staying in an asylum hotel. Cmd James Conway said Kebatu is a top priority
and that the Ethiopian national boarded a London-bound train at 12:41 on Friday afternoon, before boarding Stratford. The Met said in a tweet, "There is a great deal of confidence that Kebatu is likely still in the London area.
Officers from three police departments, including Met, Essex, and British Transport Police (BTP), searched CCTV video throughout the night in order to locate Kebatu's movements. The Met's Commander James Conway said in an update 24 hours after Kebatu boarded the train in Chelmsford: Finding Hadush Kebatus is a top priority.
A veteran Senior Investigating Officer is leading the hunt.
It is not lost on us that this situation is troubling to people,He has teams from the Specialist Crime Command with experience in finding missing people at his disposal, as well as other Met resources.
We are committed to finding and arresting him as soon as possible.Essex Police - who escorted the investigation to the Met at 11:30 on Saturday morning - said.
After Essex Police were told by the Prison Service that there had been an error,
the hunt for Kebatu began at 12:57. According to Trainline records, the Greater Anglia London-bound train that Kebatu boarded at Chelmsford at 12:41 had already been called at Shenfield by the time the search began. The service then came to a halt in Stratford at 13:10, where the Met Police claim Kebatu got off. Stratford is the UK's fifth busiest train station, with interchanges to the London Underground, London Overground, and Dockland's Light Railway (DLR). Sir Keir Starmer had previously described the deposition as completely intolerable
and that Kebatu "must be arrested and deported for his crimes.
Although an investigation is ongoing, the Prison Service has barred an officer from discharging positions. John Podmore, a former governor of HMP Brixton, Belmarsh, and Swaleside, as well as a retired jail inspector, said the procedure is fairly complicated
and that he wishes a lower down official is not thrown under the bus.
This is not one person making one decision; a multitude of people up and down the hierarchy should be checked,Mr Podmore told Radio 4's Today show.
It should be seen in the context of broader failure. I am afraid this is what happens in a broken system, and the jail system is broken.
People in his constituency were deeply distraught
by the emergence of Neil Hudson, the Conservative MP for Epping Forest. This seems to be an operational mistake,
the prime minister, the justice secretary, and the prime Minister all agreed that the money must come from somewhere, but it must not stop at the top, at the justice minister, home secretary, or prime minister.
Marie Goldman, a Liberal Democrat MP for Chelmsford, has called for a public inquiry.We need to get to grips with what happened and why it happened,
Chelmsford is a remand jail,she said on BBC Breakfast, which means that it is used to seeing prisoners arrive and going quite often.
If this sort of thing does happen in Chelmsford, it is likely that it will happen elsewhere.They are detained in HMP Chelmsford for no longer than a year, or even for a few weeks after they were convicted and waiting to be transferred to another jail.
the governor was not speaking to stakeholders individuallyGoldman also tried to reach the prisoner governor for an explanation but was told
which wasunacceptable.
Lammy said he was appalled
and livid on behalf of the people.
Let's be clear Kebatu committed a nasty sexual assault involving a young child and a woman,
We are urgently working with police to return an offender to jail after a conviction at HMP Chelmsford in error. "Our highest priority is public safety, and we've opened an investigation into this occurrence.he continued. And for those reasons, this of course is very serious.
Kebatu's detention in July sparked demonstrations outside The Bell Hotel in Epping, where he had been staying after arriving in the United Kingdom on a tiny boat. Kebatu attempted to kiss a teenage girl on a bench and made several sexually explicit statements in September, according to Chelmsford Magistrates' Court. He encountered the same girl the next day and attempted to kiss her before sexually assaulting her. He also sexually assaulted a woman who had offered to assist him in drafting a CV to find jobs. Kebatu's date of birth was December 1986, making him 38, but court documents showed he was 41. He was found guilty of five criminal charges and sentenced to 12 months in prison. He was also ordered to sign the Sex Offenders Register for ten years, under a five-year sexual harassment ban, which barred him from approaching or approaching any female. The court heard that it was his firm desire
to be deported. It's unclear where Kebatu was being arrested to, but under the UK Borders Act 2007, a deportation order must be issued where a foreign national has been found guilty of an offence and has received a custodial sentence of at least 12 months. District Judge Christopher Williams said in his sentencing remarks on September 23rd that the time Kebatu had already been detained during his appeal would count towards his sentence.
the judge said. The earliest date of your release will be estimated, and you will be notified of it. " Kebatu was arrested on 8 July and was released in error 108 days later. On his release, he would have been eligible for a £76 discharge payment.You will also be subjected to an early release policy,
The dismissal, according to Conservative Party leader Kemi Badenoch, was a degree of incompetence that beggars approve.
Conservatives voted against Labour's prisoner release policy because it was returning predators to our streets,she said on X.
He is now walking the streets of Essex," Nigel Farage, the reform UK's prime minister, said. Britain is broken. According to a study by His Majesty's Prison and Probation Service, 262 prisoners in England and Wales were released in error between April 2024 and March 2025, up from 115 in the previous 12 months.
