UNITED KINGDOM — Ifedayo Adeyeye, a British-Nigerian man, fled the United Kingdom on April 22 after being mistakenly released from HMP Pentonville prison while serving a sentence for child abduction.
The Metropolitan Police told a court on Monday, May 11, 2026, that officials at HMP Pentonville failed to notify the agency of the error for three days. Okay News reports that Ifedayo Adeyeye is believed to have travelled to Spain shortly after his accidental release.
Adeyeye was handed a 12-month prison sentence on April 20 for failing to facilitate the return of his son, Laurys Adeyeye, to the child’s mother. He was released the following day because details of the new sentence were not passed to the officers responsible for authorising releases.
A judge ruled in June that Adeyeye had abducted the boy from Claire N’Djosse in France and taken him to Nigeria. The abduction occurred on July 27, 2024, which the court heard was the first time the child had stayed overnight with his father.
Adeyeye was arrested upon his return to the United Kingdom and jailed for six months in January for contempt of court. During the hearing on Monday, the Metropolitan Police said, “The Metropolitan Police recognises both the seriousness of this matter and how traumatic the present situation must be for both [Ms N’Djosse] and her son,”
The police further said, “We are using the powers at our disposal to pursue all reasonable lines of enquiry to locate and arrest [Adeyeye] and will continue to do so diligently and expeditiously,”
The court previously criticized the prison for an “alarming lack of urgency” during a hearing on May 1. The judge said, “If the police had been contacted immediately, this could perhaps, almost certainly perhaps, have been prevented. The public is entitled to expect far better than this.”
Data from the Ministry of Justice indicated that 179 inmates were mistakenly released between April 2025 and March 2026.
