Inmate mistakenly released from London prison arrested after more than a week of freedom

A general view of HMP Wandsworth in southwest London on Sept. 6, 2023. (Yui Mok/PA via AP, File)

LONDON — A convicted sex offender who was mistakenly released early from a London prison was arrested Friday after more than a week of freedom, police said.

Brahim Kaddour-Cherif was one of two men accidentally released from Wandsworth Prison in the past two weeks that has caused a political headache for the government and focused renewed attention on an overcrowded and overwhelmed prison system.

The other inmate, Billy Smith, 35, who was sentenced to nearly four years for fraud, surrendered at the Victorian-era lockup Thursday.

Cherif, 24, a registered sex offender due to a previous indecent exposure conviction, was serving time for trespass with intent to steal.

The Algerian national who overstayed a legal visit to the U.K. in 2019 was in the initial stages of deportation when freed from the prison.

He was stopped by police in north London in an arrest filmed by Sky News. He initially denied he was the man they were looking for and then said he was not to blame for being on the streets.

“I’m not Brahim, bro,” he initially told a police officer who said he recognized his distinctive nose. “Everyone know him, he’s in (the) news,” Cherif said.

After police officers pulled out their phones to look at the photo of the wanted man, he effectively admitted he was Cherif.

“It is not my fault,” Cherif said. “They released me illegally.”

Both men were wrongly freed from Wandsworth, which was built in southwest London in the middle of the 19th century, and was under scrutiny after another prisoner escaped two years ago by clinging to the underside of a food delivery truck.

The inadvertent releases followed more stringent security checks that were supposed to be in place after an asylum-seeker who inspired a rise of anti-immigrant protests was mistakenly freed from Chelmsford Prison, east of London, on Oct. 24.

Prison chiefs were summoned to a meeting Thursday to discuss the errors and said efforts were being made to update a system that still uses paper prison records.

The mistaken releases have become a source of heated debate and a political liability for the Labour government after being a thorn in the side of their Conservative predecessors.

According to government figures, 262 prisoners were released in error in the year ending March 2025, a 128% increase on the previous 12-month period.

Conservatives say the Labour government is to blame for a policy to release some inmates earlier to ensure prisons don’t exceed capacity.

But Labour has blamed 14 years of Conservative rule and years of austerity that has starved the Prison Service of resources.

“We inherited a prison system in crisis and I’m appalled at the rate of releases in error this is causing,” Justice Secretary David Lammy said after the arrest. “I’m determined to grip this problem, but there is a mountain to climb which cannot be done overnight.”

Brian Melley, The Associated Press