Labour minister defends giving migrant sex attacker £500: ‘It’s the right thing to do’ | Politics | News
A policing minister said he understood the decision to give migrant sex offender Hadush Kebatu £500 after he threatened to disrupt his deportation flight was “stuck in his throat” but insisted it was “the right thing to do”.
“So it sticks in the throat, doesn’t it? I understand that. It’s the same for me. It’s the same for most people,” Sarah Jones told Sky News.
“We’re not spending taxpayers’ money on military planes, private planes. We’re putting these criminals on normal flights with normal people who are going on vacation or visiting relatives.”
“We have to make sure this is done safely, which is why he had people with him. But if he had chosen to get on a plane, we would have had to take him off that plane because that plane is not our plane.”
It would have cost “at least £10,000” to remove him and re-detain him, so it was decided that “it was better to get him out of our country”.
“And it was a frustrating choice, yet… I hope people understand that this is the choice they’re faced with and it’s the right thing to do.”
Jones said giving people cash to get them out of the country was “nothing new” after it was revealed £500 was given to migrant sex offender Hadush Kebatu.
It would cost thousands of pounds to rebook his flight and have him escorted by five people again, he told LBC.
“So the choice was £500 rather than £10,000 and I think that was the right decision to make in terms of the use of taxpayers’ money,” he said.
He couldn’t understand why Kebatu needed five escorts.
“It’s clear he was a very bad criminal. We wanted to get out of the country and we wanted to make sure he left,” he said.
He later added: “I think there’s always been a system where sometimes some payment is made to get people on planes and out of the country. I don’t think that’s anything new.”
He said he expected the investigation launched by David Lammy into how Kebatu was mistakenly released from prison to be reported “within a few months at most”.
