Police forces spent over £150,000 in Hadush Kebatu manhunt
Review reveals costs of search following wrongful prisoner release
A review has revealed that police forces amassed costs exceeding £150,000 during the search for Hadush Kebatu, a prisoner who was mistakenly released from HMP Chelmsford last October.
The manhunt was initiated after Kebatu, a figure central to asylum hotel protests in Epping, was wrongly freed.
He had been residing at the Bell Hotel in Essex when charged with the sexual assault of a 14-year-old girl, leading to several protests outside the hotel during the summer.
After being found guilty of multiple offences, Kebatu was sentenced to prison but was erroneously released before being recaptured and deported to Ethiopia.
The three-day search to locate Kebatu incurred expenses of £152,738 for Essex Police and the Metropolitan Police.
The findings of a review conducted by Dame Lynne Owens, former Met Police deputy commissioner, highlighted the extra efforts by both forces, with Essex Police officers enduring additional shifts ranging from five to seven hours, sometimes extending to 17 hours.
Essex Police was responsible for £80,656 of the total cost.
Meanwhile, the Met allocated 1,178 officer and staff hours over two days, costing £72,082.
Describing the situation as a “symptom of a broken system,” Dame Lynne called attention to the systemic issues contributing to the error.
Recent Ministry of Justice statistics, released on Wednesday, showed that 179 inmates were mistakenly freed between April 2025 and March 2026, averaging approximately three releases weekly.
Justice Secretary David Lammy spoke to ITV News regarding the incident, stating his reluctance to “blame the frontline staff for what Dame Lynne finds is a broken system.”
“It’s a system error, and of course it’s our job as government to get on and fix that,” Lammy explained.
Lammy further attributed the failures to “underinvestment over successive governments, but particularly the last 14 years of austerity.”
Pia Sinha, chief executive of the Prison Reform Trust, commented, "The mistaken release of Hadush Kebatu was a shocking failure, exposing a criminal justice system under such strain that it had failed in its most basic duty.
"As we have now learnt, this was sadly not an isolated case, with 179 releases in error taking place between April 1 2025 to March 31 2026."
Sinha warned that the system would "remain vulnerable" to similar errors until staffing pressures were resolved.