A convicted kidnapper serving a 21-year jail term has gone on the run after walking out of an open prison, sparking renewed outrage over Britain’s spiralling prison absconder crisis.
Nigerian national Ola Abimbola, 36, reportedly walked out of HMP Ford, an open prison in West Sussex, on October 10 and has not been seen since. He was serving a 21-year sentence for kidnap, grievous bodily harm, and possession of an offensive weapon.
Sussex Police said they are working with prison officials and other agencies to track down the missing inmate. Abimbola is now the latest foreign national to vanish from custody, following a string of high-profile blunders across the prison system.
His disappearance comes just weeks after Algerian sex offender Brahim Kaddour-Cherif, 24, was mistakenly released from HMP Wandsworth on October 29 and remains at large. Another Wandsworth inmate, William “Billy” Smith, 35, who was also wrongly freed, handed himself in three days later.
Mark Drury, from the Prison Governors’ Association, said the number of inmates absconding from open prisons has “suddenly increased”, warning of an “increased risk to the public”. He blamed the trend on pressure to ease prison overcrowding, saying many offenders now housed in open prisons “would not have been considered suitable two or three years ago.”
In a further blow to the prison service, Osei Kuffour, 36 — a violent East London drug dealer serving 25 years for attempted murder — absconded from HMP Spring Hill in Buckinghamshire in October after failing to return. He was later arrested the following day, after police warned the public not to approach him.
Another Spring Hill inmate, Anton Newell, 36, from Middlesex, also fled in June and remains missing.
Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer said he was “angry and frustrated” over the spate of wrongful releases and escapes, calling them “intolerable.” He defended Justice Secretary David Lammy, who insisted new security checks were introduced after the earlier Hadush Kebatu scandal, but admitted the latest blunders occurred before those measures took effect.
