Wandsworth prison manhunt: What we know about mistakenly released inmates
Two prisoners were mistakenly released from HMP Wandsworth in the past week
- Published
Two prisoners mistakenly released from Wandsworth prison are now back in custody following a manhunt to find them.
Brahim Kaddour-Cherif, a 24-year-old Algerian, who is a sex offender, was arrested on Friday after being spotted by a member of the public.
William Smith, 35, who was jailed for fraud on Monday but then released later the same day, handed himself back in to the prison on Thursday.
It comes after the accidental release of Hadush Kebatu, a migrant sex offender, from HMP Chelmsford last month.
Here is what we know.
How and why were the two prisoners released?
We know very little at this stage about why or how Kaddour-Cherif was mistakenly released.
The Metropolitan Police were not told about the error until 4 November. It is unclear why this was the case.
The BBC has established Kaddour-Cherif was released on 29 October, a day after being found not guilty of breaching the requirements of the sex offenders' register. However, he was still facing other charges and should have remained in custody.
The prison officers' representatives said a clerical error meant there was no warrant from the court to hold him - and he was released.
As for Smith, the BBC understands he was released as a result of a clerical error at court level.
He was given a custodial sentence but it was entered in the computer system as a suspended sentence.
This was spotted and amended by the court but this correction was sent to the wrong person.
Who is Brahim Kaddour-Cherif?
Brahim Kaddour-Cherif is a 24-year-old Algerian man.
The Met said he was a registered sex offender who was convicted of indecent exposure in November 2024, relating to an incident in March that year.
He was given an 18-month community order and placed on the sex offenders' register for five years.
Kaddour-Cherif is understood to have entered the UK legally on a visitor's visa but had overstayed and was in the initial stages of the deportation process. He was not an asylum seeker.
On Friday, police received a call from a member of the public reporting a sighting of a man believed to be Kaddour-Cherif near a college in Islington, north London, the Metropolitan Police said.
A short time after at 11:30 GMT, police detained a man at the location matching Kaddour-Cherif's description and his identity was confirmed.
He was arrested for being unlawfully at large and also arrested on suspicion of assaulting an emergency worker in relation to a previous incident.
He is now in police custody.
Brahim Kaddour-Cherif seen in arrest footage from a police bodycam
Who is William 'Billy' Smith?
Watch: Mistakenly released prisoner William 'Billy' Smith hands himself in on Thursday
William Smith, who goes by Billy, was released on Monday, Surrey Police said.
In an update shortly before 11:30 on Thursday, the force said he had handed himself back in to the prison.
He was sentenced to 45 months for multiple fraud offences at Croydon Crown Court on Monday. He appeared via a live video link from HMP Wandsworth.
How common are mistaken releases?
There were 262 prisoners released in error in the year leading up to March 2025, according to the latest data for England and Wales.
Of those, 233 were let go from prisons and 29 from courts.
That is more than double the 115 mistaken releases the previous year.
The prison service said in the report, external that "releases in error remain infrequent" and that the rise was linked to "a range of operational and legislative changes".
Mark Fairhurst, chairman of the Prison Officers' Association, told BBC Breakfast on Thursday that an average of 22 prisoners were being wrongly released each month.
Why was the deputy PM under fire at PMQs over escaped prisoners?
During Prime Minister's Questions (PMQs), Justice Secretary and Deputy Prime Minister David Lammy, standing in for Sir Keir Starmer, was repeatedly asked by shadow justice secretary James Cartlidge whether any further asylum-seekers who were offenders had accidentally been released from prison since Epping sex offender Hadush Kebatu was mistakenly let out last month.
Lammy repeatedly refused to directly answer the question but towards the end of the session it emerged in the media that a prisoner had been mistakenly released. He was later named as Kaddour-Cherif.
Lammy was aware of the incident going into PMQs after being told about it overnight but not whether or not the man was an asylum seeker, the BBC understands.
The Conservatives reportedly were told about the mistaken release 15 minutes before PMQs started.
What has reaction been to the prisoner releases?
While he did not comment directly on the case during PMQs afterwards Lammy said he was "absolutely outraged" and his officials have been "working through the night to take [Kaddour-Cherif] back to prison".
Shadow home secretary Chris Philp said it was "shocking that once again the Labour government has mistakenly allowed a foreign criminal to be released from prison".
He added Lammy's PMQs appearance was "nothing short of disgraceful" and accused him of being "dishonest" with the public and parliament, calling for him to come back to the Commons to answer questions.
Sir Keir's spokesman said the latest error was "unacceptable" and would be investigated.
The Liberal Democrats' justice spokesperson Jess Brown-Fuller called for Lammy to return to the Commons to explain "why he failed to answer" questions on whether another prisoner had been mistakenly released during PMQs.
Reform UK leader Nigel Farage has called the incident a "farce". His deputy Richard Tice questioned what Lammy knew during PMQs and said it would be "at least very poor form" to deliberately withhold information from the Commons.
Rosena Allin-Khan, the Labour MP for Tooting - where the prison is located - said: "Local residents will quite rightly be deeply concerned. We urgently need answers from the government and Ministry of Justice as to how this was allowed to happen."
The MP for Woking has told BBC Radio Surrey it's "completely unacceptable" that another prisoner - with links to the area - has been accidentally released from HMP Wandsworth.
Lib Dem Will Forster, MP for Woking, said it was "completely unacceptable" that William Smith had been released accidentally.
"It's utterly unacceptable that my constituents in Woking are going to be worried about their safety due to the government wrongly releasing three prisoners in a matter of a week," he said.
What do we know about HMP Wandsworth?
Wandsworth Prison is a Victorian-era facility in south London.
Built in 1851, the complex was originally constructed to house fewer than 1,000 prisoners.
An August 2024 report by the prison's independent monitoring board found inmate numbers in the "cramped, squalid" prison, had grown to 1,513.
"Wings were chaotic and staff across most units were unable to confirm where all prisoners were during the working day," the report said.
The board added it was unable to conduct prisoner roll checks because staff could not provide accurate numbers and that a third of officers were not available for operational duty on any given day due to sickness, restricted duties or training.
In April, the HM Inspectorate of Prisons noted the population had been reduced by 150, and other "limited and fragile" improvements had been made.
In 2023 the prison was in the headlines after former British soldier Daniel Khalife escaped by clinging to the underside of a lorry.