“History teaches us that weakness is provocative,” warned two-time US Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld. Last weekend, the British state put its weakness on public display.
On Friday morning, Hadush Kebatu, sentenced last month for sexually assaulting a woman and a 14-year-old girl, was mistakenly released from HMP Chelmsford instead of transferred to immigration detention pending deportation.
Did the master criminal trick his way out? Not quite. CCTV shows Kebatu lingering outside the jail for over an hour looking confused. He even tried to reenter the prison, was turned away, then was directed to the train station with a £76 discharge grant in his pocket.
Over a farcical embarrassing three-day manhunt, despite CCTV repeatedly spotting him meandering around London in his prison-issue grey tracksuit, Kebatu managed to evade what Commander James Conway billed as “a diligent and fast-paced investigation led by specialist officers from the Metropolitan Police”. In the end, it was a member of the public who tipped officers to Finsbury Park, where Kebatu was arrested on Sunday morning.
This was not just any prisoner. Kebatu’s July arrest triggered major protests outside the migrant hotel in Epping where he’d been living. In other words, this was a case officers should have handled with maximal care.
Nor was this a freak glitch. Ministry of Justice figures show 262 prisoners were released in error in the year to March 2025, more than double the 115 in the previous year. (Until recently, the average annual number was around 50.) If the state cannot reliably keep hold of people already in its custody, a core function of government is failing.
Beyond the mortifying optics, this “administrative” blunder has significant consequences for national security. Deterrence isn’t only clandestine surveillance and elite units; it’s the visible, everyday competence that tells would-be offenders that the system will catch them. If an offender can stroll out of jail thanks to misclassification, get directions to the train station, and reach the capital, what signal does that send to anyone contemplating more dangerous acts? A country that broadcasts procedural chaos erodes the palpable deterrence upon which prevention relies.
The threat is not theoretical. The UK’s national terrorism threat level has been classified as “substantial”, meaning an attack is likely. MI5’s Director General recently warned the service is running near-record volumes of terrorism investigations alongside a sharp rise in hostile-state activity.
Kebatu appears not to have sought violence after his erroneous release; CCTV showed mundane movements across the city. But that is precisely the point: the same visible incompetence, in a different case, would be catastrophic. Those who mean Britain harm watched as a “specialist” manhunt stumbled against someone making absolutely no effort to hide. And what if Kebatu did seek violence? Are we supposed to believe that the Met police would have suddenly become competent and tracked him down sooner? Seems unlikely.
When weakness is visible, attackers take the shot
UK counter-terrorism guidance explicitly warns that hostile reconnaissance looks for exactly the vulnerabilities British police displayed. And when weakness is visible, attackers take the shot.
So what kind of attackers are plotting against the British public right now? Former-CIA targeter Sarah Adams has repeatedly warned that the threats are complex. The UK is a target for a portfolio of attacks: coordinated city assaults, aviation attacks using advanced hidden bombs, and lone-actor attacks accelerated by online radicalisation. And MI5’s director general has separately warned of a “huge” terrorism risk from al-Qaeda and ISIS. That’s exactly when visible competence deters, and visible incompetence invites.
In the Kebatu fiasco, the state looked confused, the public saw it, and adversaries — foreign and domestic — took note. Rumsfeld was right: weakness is provocative. Britain cannot afford to project it, least of all in the simplest of state functions, like keeping track of who is released from prison and when. Weakness provokes; competence deters.
