UK police on Sunday arrested an Ethiopian asylum seeker and convicted sex offender, whose crimes had sparked anti-immigration protests, after he was accidentally released from prison in an embarrassing blunder by officials.

London's Metropolitan Police said officers arrested Hadush Kebatu in the north of the capital nearly 48 hours after he was mistakenly freed.

Prime Minister Keir Starmer said Kebatu would now be deported.

"We have ordered an investigation to establish what went wrong. We must make sure this doesn't happen again," he added on X.

Kebatu, 38, had served the first month of a one-year sentence for sexually assaulting a teenage girl and a woman, and was reportedly due to be deported when the Prison Service error occurred Friday.

His high-profile case earlier this year in

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