Man who ‘called police’ on escaped prisoner recognised him from Metro

A man claiming he told police the whereabouts of the wrongly released prisoner, Brahim Kaddour-Cherif, said he recognised him from Metro newspaper.

Kaddour-Cherif, 24, was caught by police in the Finsbury Park area of London after a four-day manhunt.

The Algerian national was released from HMP Wandsworth in south London on October 29, though police said they were not told until Tuesday, November 4.

Nadjib Mekdhia, 50, who is homeless but stays in the Finsbury Park area, brandished a copy of Metro, as he explained how he alerted police to the convicted sex offender.

He told PA news agency: ‘I am glad he is in prison. We do not need people like that in our community.

‘I am proud Algerian. I am proud British. We do the right thing.’

He said he was walking past a café on Blackstock Road on Friday morning when he saw Kaddour-Cherif.

‘Straight away I called 999, I gave the location and said “this is him”,’ Mr Mekdhia said.

He added: ‘I was by the Algerian café. The individual approached me. I don’t know what he was doing. I recognised him. I asked a member of the public to give me a phone.

‘Straight away I called the police. The police vans came quickly.’

He said Kaddour-Cherif was just ‘hanging around’ at the time.

Kaddour-Cherif had been convicted of indecent exposure in November 2024 and was serving a sentence for another offence – trespass with intent to steal – when he was released.

The registered sex offender was one of two men separately released by mistake from the prison in the same week.

Both are back in custody, after William Smith handed himself in on Thursday.

Footage taken by Sky News yesterday showed Kaddour-Cherif, wearing glasses, a grey jumper, a black headband, dark green trousers and a backpack.

He was placed in handcuffs by police officers while denying that he was Brahim.

When asked if he knew him, he said: ‘Everyone knows him, he’s in (the) news.’

Metro understands that he is not an asylum seeker and entered the UK legally on a visitor’s visa in 2019 but overstayed.

He was in the process of being deported when he was accidentally freed from prison.

The inmate was caught just a three-minute walk from where Hadush Kebatu was re-arrested.

Kebatu, an asylum seeker who sexually assaulted a 14-year-old days after arriving in the UK on a small boat, was mistakenly released on October 24.

Repeated wrongful releases have piled pressure on the Labour government, which insists it inherited a broken prison system from the previous government.

David Lammy failed to answer whether he was aware of another incorrectly released prisoner five times, at Prime Minister’s Questions on Wednesday.

He instead turned on the opposition, telling them to ‘get a grip’.

It has since emerged that the Justice Secretary was aware of a wrongful release, but he has since said he was ‘not equipped with all of the detail’.

Speaking at a site where builders were working on a 1,700-cell prison in Leicester, Mr Lammy said: ‘I first found out about this on Wednesday morning. I was in the department, both learning from officials, but also preparing for Prime Minister’s Questions.’

Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer backed Lammy, saying it was ‘right’ that the Justice Secretary was ‘setting out the facts to the best of his knowledge’.

A blunder, in which Lammy was seen not wearing a poppy at the beginning of PMQs, also forced him to admit he’d been suit shopping that morning.

The Shadow Justice Secretary Robert Jenrick said he had no confidence in Lammy, describing his handling of questions at PMQs as ‘a disgrace’.

He also said: ‘He didn’t come clean. He spent the next morning, we’re told, going out shopping for a suit rather than taking charge of his department.’

Lammy had promised the ‘strongest checks ever’ at prisons to prevent similar errors following the Kebatu case.

The new checks mean more responsibility for the duty governor, who is in charge of prison security.

But the checks are proving a ‘significant burden’, according to one senior prison staffer, who said ‘they’ve only increased the paperwork’.

Prisons have been in a state of crisis for several years. The population has continued to balloon, while staff numbers are not keeping up with the number of inmates.

Some 262 prisoners in England and Wales were mistakenly released in the year to March – up from 115 the previous year.

Get in touch with our news team by emailing us at webnews@metro.co.uk.

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