The home secretary, Shabana Mahmood, says she “shares the public’s anger” that Hadush Kebatu, a “vile child sex offender” as she describes him, was mistakenly released from prison and allowed to go on the run for a few days.
Presumably, Ms Mahmood is equally furious, if not more so, that it became necessary for officials to offer him £500 to go quietly. What had been a PR disaster – the initial discharge from prison – had been recovered as a PR coup, of immediate deportation, only to be ruined by a bung to a man an entire nation reviled. That would test anyone’s patience.
