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• Thu Nov 6 2025

Clerical error may have been behind release of missing sex offender

5 hours ago Share Save Dominic Casciani, Legal Correspondent and Claire Ellison and Thomas Mackintosh Share Save

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More details have emerged about the circumstances surrounding the release in error of convicted sex offender Brahim Kaddour-Cherif as a hunt continues for the missing prisoner. He is one of two men separately released by mistake from Wandsworth Prison in the past week. William (Billy) Smith has since handed himself in. The BBC has established Kaddour-Cherif was released on 29 October, the day after being found not guilty of a breach of the sex offenders' register's requirements, but 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.

This release comes after a series of prosecutions and court appearances by him dating back two years. These cases came about three years after the Algerian national was flagged in February 2020 as a probable visa overstayer, having entered the UK legally on a visitor's visa in 2019. It is not clear what, if any, steps were taken five years ago to remove him from the country. We know from government statements that the 24-year-old was in the early stages of deportation at the time of his release. Outstanding criminal cases would be a reason for any proposed removal from the UK to have been delayed by the Home Office. The releases of Kaddour-Cherif and William Smith come just weeks after migrant sex offender Hadush Kebatu, who arrived in the UK on a small boat, was mistakenly released from HMP Chelmsford in Essex. Wandsworth prison manhunt: What we know about mistakenly released inmates

Wandsworth prison is by far the worst I've visited

Court appearances and offences

Court records reveal that the 24-year-old has been accused of 11 offences since September 2023 - his conviction and sentence for an indecent exposure, committed in March 2024, being one of them. Another offence he admitted was assault of a police officer. He pleaded guilty to that offence and possession of cocaine, both also committed in March 2024, at a hearing in February this year. He separately admitted a relatively minor charge of assaulting a man in public, receiving a conditional discharge plus an order to pay the victim ?100 in compensation. In July 2024, Kaddour-Cherif admitted the indecent exposure allegation. His sentencing for that was put off a number of times - and in October 2024 Westminster Magistrates' Court remanded him in custody in relation to that matter. He was held in Wormwood Scrubs prison in west London and then received an 18-month community order and was placed on the sex offender register for five years. That register requires an offender to report there whereabouts to the police.

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