CCTV images released as search for asylum seeker mistakenly released from prison enters third day
He was last seen on Friday evening.
Last updated 26th Oct 2025
Searches for an asylum seeker mistakenly released from prison have entered a third day as police revealed where he was last seen.
Ethiopian national Hadush Kebatu was jailed for 12 months in September for the sexual assault of a 14-year-old girl, he was wrongly freed from HMP Chelmsford on Friday morning instead of being sent to an immigration detention centre.
Kebatu was last seen in Hackney, East London, just before 8pm on Friday.
The Metropolitan Police, issued CCTV of him in a library in the borough’s Dalston Square two hours earlier, at 6pm, carrying his belongings in a “distinctive white bag with pictures of avocados on it” and still wearing his prison-issue grey tracksuit top and bottoms.
The migrant, who had been living at the Bell Hotel in Epping, Essex, when he assaulted the girl, took a train from Chelmsford to Stratford, east London, arriving at 1.12pm on Friday and then had taken “a number of journeys” across London and had “access to funds”.
A delivery driver described seeing Kebatu return to HMP Chelmsford in a “very confused” state “four or five times”, only to be turned away by prison staff and directed to the railway station.
The driver, named only as Sim, told Sky News that he saw Kebatu come out of the prison saying: “Where am I going? What am I doing?”
The driver said: “He kept scratching his head and saying, ‘where do I go, where do I go?’
“The fourth or fifth time (he went into the reception) he was starting to get upset, he was getting stressed.
Commander James Conway, of the Metropolitan Police, said in a direct appeal to Kebatu: “We want to locate you in a safe and controlled way.
“You had already indicated a desire to return to Ethiopia when speaking to immigration staff; the best outcome for you is to make contact directly with us by either calling 999 or reporting yourself to a police station.”
A prison officer has been taken off duties to discharge prisoners while an investigation takes place.