Migrant sex offender Hadush Kebatu was given £500 to leave the UK following his arrest on Sunday, which the Conservatives branded an “outrageous waste of taxpayers’ money”.
The Ethiopian national was arrested on Sunday in northeast London after being mistakenly released from HMP Chelsmford on Friday, where he was serving a 12-month sentence for sexually assaulting a teenage girl.
Kebatu was forcibly removed to his home country on Tuesday night with a team of five escorts on the flight, and arrived on Wednesday morning with no right to return to Britain, the Home Office said.
“I have pulled every lever to deport Kebatu and remove him off British soil. I am pleased to confirm this vile child sex offender has been deported. Our streets are safer because of it,” Justice Secretary Shabana Mahmood said.
But the case has raised a number of significant questions.
Why was he paid?
Downing Street said Kebatu had attempted to apply for a “facilitated return scheme”, which sees foreign nationals offered resettlement grants of up to £1,500.
However his bid was denied.
Instead, he threatened to disrupt his deportation flight back to his home country.
To avoid the risk of delay and face higher costs of cancelling and re-booking his journey, an “operational decision” was taken to give him a discretional payment of £500.
“Given Kebatu threatened to disrupt the flight, an operational decision was taken to provide a £500 payment to facilitate his return,” the Prime Minister’s official spokesman said.
“The alternative was a slower, more expensive process for the taxpayer, which would have included detention, a new flight and potentially fighting subsequent legal claims, and the cost of cancelling the flight alone would have run into several thousands of pounds.”
When looking at flight prices for tickets from London to Ethiopia’s capital Addis Ababa, costs range upwards of £725 according to SkyScanner.
Many return flights are above £1,100 for the seven hour and 45 minute flight.
Hadush Gerberslasie Kebatu was mistakenly released from prison (Photo: Metropolitan Police/PA Wire)Commenting on Kebatu’s removal, prisons minister, Lord James Timpson said: “The £500 that was paid was an operational decision to get Kebatu on a plane without any delays.
“It’s far cheaper than booking more flights, and it’s far cheaper than him being in a cell for another year, which is £54,000.
“I also think it was a sensible decision by civil servants, and it was in a golfing analogy ‘If someone wants to give you a putt, you take it’.
“He needed to get on the plane and get back to Ethiopia.”
Who accompanied him?
Kebatu was accompanied by multiple people on his flight back to Ethiopia due to safety concerns.
It was reported that included a team of five immigration security escorts.
During his original trial the court heard it was his “firm wish” to leave the UK.
However he failed to comply with immigration officials just hours before his scheduled flight on Tuesday night.
David Wood, former director general of immigration enforcement, said: “If offenders start fighting, biting, spitting on a plane, a lot of captains will throw them off because of the disruption to other passengers.
“In my time, in those cases, we’d get them on a charter plane instead. But we wouldn’t have given them money – it’s not right and would be of no benefit when an enforced removal was being planned,” the Telegraph quoted him as saying.
It also remains unclear if a Home Office team or a third party outsourced by the party dealt with his removal.
Kebatu was briefly held by officers upon his arrival at Ethiopia’s capital Addis Ababa before being released, local police told the BBC.
They said there was “no legal basis for his continued detention”.
Protesters outside the Bell Hotel in Epping, Essex, which housed asylum seekers (Photo: Lucy North)Was he ignored by police?
In an interview with Sky News on his return to Ethiopia, Kebatu claimed he was ignored by police officers as he tried to hand himself into police in London, but was ignored.
He said: “I [told] police, look here, police I am wanted man, I am arrested, I will give you my hand, please help where is police station? He ignored me, he drove [off].”
Kebatu added that he told the officer his name and that he had been mistakenly released from prison.
“I am not unknown. The police station, where is the place? But also I go to police, I will give you my hand please help me where is the police station, take me, I am wanted.
“You know me, or my image, my name is Hadush Kebatu, nationality Ethiopia. Please, I was the mistake release from Chelmsford prison. Please help me.”
Responding to the claim, the Met Police said: “The Met is not aware of any evidence to support the claims that Kebatu approached officers on Saturday morning.
“The actions of officers who responded to the sighting of him on Sunday morning show how seriously they were taking the manhunt. Kebatu’s actions on the morning of his arrest were more like those of someone trying to avoid officers, not trying to hand himself in.”
What will the political fallout be?
The case has been at the centre of controversy, ever since allegations against Kebatu first emerged.
He had been living at the Bell Hotel in Epping, Essex, when he sexually assaulted a 14-year-old girl and a woman, sparking a wave of protests outside the accommodation used to house asylum seekers.
The failures that led up to his mistaken release also exposed a chaotic prison system, with Keir Starmer promising an investigation to “make sure this doesn’t happen again”.
But his deportation is unlikely to be the end of the matter.
Political leaders have criticised the decision to grant Kebatu a payment, with Kemi Badenoch saying: “We have said we need to leave the ECHR (European Convention on Human Rights) and deport all foreign criminals as soon as possible, and we certainly shouldn’t be giving them taxpayers’ money to leave our country.”
The Liberal Democrats also said the payment was “outrageous” and people would “rightly be angry”.
The case is also likely to put more pressure on Starmer, who is facing mounting criticism over his handling of the immigration system.
“Public trust was completely trashed after Kebatu’s wrongful release and now this,” the Lib Dem’s party’s home affairs spokesperson Max Wilkinson said.
“We need to fix our fundamentally broken immigration system.”
Reform UK’s head of policy Zia Yusuf lashed out at the Government for “failing to keep its people safe, failing to lock up criminals, and wasting endless amounts of taxpayer money while doing so.”
How many times has the Government done this before?
It’s unclear whether such a discretionary payment has been used in the past.
However under a facilitated return scheme for foreign criminals, set up in 2006 and used by successive governments, those being deported can receive grants of up to £1,500.
In September, ITV joined a flight where 47 foreign criminals were being sent to Romania, with several migrants handed bank cards pre-loaded with the money.
The scheme was set up to allow the early removal of foreign national offenders to their country of origin easier
The Government says it provides financial support for reintegration to encourage cooperation with their removal.
All foreign national offenders subject to deportation are eligible for the scheme, with a few exceptions.
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