Article Lammy says 'didn't have all facts' when quizzed on migrant sex offender (UK brewing)

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https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article...stake.html

INTRO: David Lammy was on Thursday night urged to 'stop digging and come clean' as he tried to dodge responsibility for the accidental release of foreign sex offenders.

The Deputy PM and Justice Secretary was struggling to contain a growing backlash on Thursday after a second foreign criminal was mistakenly set free – just days after he pledged to impose the 'strongest release checks ever'.

Mr Lammy faced fury this week after repeatedly dodging questions in the Commons about his knowledge of the accidental release of any other 'asylum-seeking offender' – at a time when news of the second blunder had not yet been made public.

Minutes later, police revealed that Algerian sex offender Brahim Kaddour-Cherif had been freed from Wandsworth prison in south-west London by mistake. It followed a national outcry over the accidental release last month of migrant sex offender Hadush Kebatu.

On Thursday, Mr Lammy insisted he had not been 'equipped with all of the detail' on Kaddour-Cherif when he ducked five questions on further accidental releases while standing in for Sir Keir Starmer at Prime Minister's Questions on Wednesday.

But shadow justice secretary Robert Jenrick dismissed the claim as 'total bull****'. Mr Jenrick said: 'Every time Calamity Lammy intervenes, he makes things worse. He's either lied or has absolutely no clue what's going on in his department. It's time he stopped digging and finally came clean with the facts.'

Mr Lammy, on a visit to HMP Gartree in Leicestershire, where he helped break ground on a prison expansion project, named HMP Welland Oaks, acknowledged he had a 'mountain to climb' to get on top of the prisons crisis. But he insisted he could not be blamed for the recent spate of accidental releases... (MORE - details)

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Four more mistakenly-released prisoners at large – after manhunt for sex offender ends with arrest
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/cr...60751.html

EXCERPTS: Four more mistakenly-released prisoners are at large after the manhunt for a sex offender freed in error has ended with his arrest.

The government is under increasing pressure as reports have emerged that the on-the-run inmates form part of the 262 prisoners in England and Wales who were mistakenly released in the year to March 2025.

On Friday, Brahim Kaddour-Cherif, 24, was arrested in Islington, north London, after being spotted by a member of the public following a nine-day manhunt. The Algerian national – who has convictions for theft and had previously also been convicted for indecent exposure –was serving a sentence at HMP Wandsworth in southwest London but was set free in error on 29 October.

Justice secretary David Lammy admitted there was a “mountain to climb” to tackle the prison system crisis following the 24-year-old’s arrest. The mistaken release marks just one of a number of high-profile cases of offenders being wrongly freed. Another, fraudster Billy Smith, 35, handed himself in on Thursday.

And now, the BBC has reported four other prisoners are still at large in revelations that came just hours after Kaddour-Cherif’s arrest.

In response to the reports, a Ministry of Justice spokesperson told The Independent: “The vast majority of offenders released by mistake are quickly brought back to prison, and we will do everything we can to work with the police to capture the few still in the community. These cases only further expose the scale of the crisis in our prisons we inherited. This will not be fixed overnight, but we are using every possible lever to bear down on these errors.”

[...] Shortly before news of the latest incident broke, Mr Lammy had been asked in the House of Commons whether any more asylum seekers had been wrongly released since Kebatu. The deputy prime minister, who also serves as justice secretary, refused to confirm the question when asked four times.

[...] Housing secretary Steve Reed told Times Radio: “The problem is we’ve got a broken system, and you are going to see failings when you have a broken system... (MORE - missing details)