A former security chief at HMP Wandsworth has delivered a damning verdict about the scandal-stricken London prison.
On Wednesday, it was revealed that a second sex offender Brahim Kaddour-Cherif was accidentally freed from the south London prison on October 29 - but the police service were only notified just after 1pm yesterday.
Kaddour-Cherif, who is now an illegal migrant after overstaying his visa, was serving time for trespass with an intent to steal. He was previously convicted of indecent exposure.
Soon after, Surrey Police released a second damning statement about HMP Wandsworth earlier today, confirming a convicted fraudster had also been mistakenly released.
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Mr Acheson joined Nigel on his show on Wednesday evening
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The convict, identified by Surrey Police as 35-year-old William Smith, was wrongly released on November 3, just five days after Kaddour-Cherif.
Speaking to GB News presenter Nigel Farage, Ian Acheson offered a damning indictment of the British jail, hitting out at the "state" of the British prison system.
He commented: “First of all, it's rather interesting that the Metropolitan Police statement has said that they were informed by HM Prison and Probation service of this release in error six days later.
“What we don't know is when the prison service actually knew this release in error had taken place.
"There's quite a lot of distance between ‘informed’ and ‘knew about’ and I'm just wondering, given the just the calamity of this second release and the extent of the security failure, did they know beforehand and was there a desperate, panicked operation in place to try to get this person back into custody before it broke into the media again?"
During a fiery clash in the Commons over the despatch box during Prime Minister's Questions, the Deputy Prime Minister and Shadow Defence Secretary sunk their teeth into one another as David Lammy dodged James Cartlidge's question about whether any more asylum seekers had been released in error.
The Ministry of Justice told GB News the Deputy Prime Minister and Justice Secretary found out about the error at HMP Wandsworth overnight.
The Labour MP refused to answer the question because information was still emerging about the "complicated" case involving multiple agencies, sources said.
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“I don't think David Lammy covered himself in glory at all the despatch box," the head of security declared.
"He hasn't conducted himself properly in relation to the first release scenario of Kebatu, when he seemed to lose his temper and he did the same thing again.
“Ordinary people are aghast at these repeated security failures and expect accountability to come from the Government and we haven't seen that. We've seen a degree of obfuscation, frankly."
He added: “If this disaster was going to happen anywhere at all in Britain after the release scenario of Kebatu, it would have happened at HMP Wandsworth; a 20 minute car ride from headquarters, a prison in free fall in plain sight, in absolute chaos for years, with nothing being done to fix it with a very large population of foreign national offenders.
"It would have happened there, and it did."
Three convicts have been accidentally released from British jails over the past few weeks
He also explained wider problems in the nation's prison service, dubbing it "gutted of experience and personnel for years" ever since "absolutely criminally stupid austerity measures" were introduced.
After Daniel Khalife escaped from the London jail in 2023, the Prison Service conducted an internal review of the security at Wandsworth.
Leaked data indicated that there were 81 separate failures in safety and security had occurred in the process leading up to Khalife's escape.
“And that included things like inadequate staffing and experienced staffing, staff asleep at their posts, staff looking at their phones instead of what was in front of them," he told Nigel.
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