Hatton Garden raider mistakenly freed from jail in latest blunder

Hatton Garden raider Michael Seed was accidentally released from jail, spending six months at large before the mistake was realised - and he was only recalled to prison this month.

In Labour's latest accidental prison release blunder, the 66-year-old electronics expert, nicknamed ‘Basil’ and who was jailed for 10 years in March 2019, was freed in August last year.

Officials miscalculated how much extra time the criminal still had to serve from a further six-and-a-half year sentence imposed in 2022 for failing to repay ill-gotten gains from the infamous 2015 heist.

He should not have been eligible for release until June 2027, after serving half the additional term behind bars.

Seed, one of the ringleaders of the raid, was only put back inside 9 days ago.

Last night, former Tory leader Sir Iain Duncan Smith called the Prison Service and justice officials ‘utterly incompetent’ for the mistaken release of Seed – and failure to recapture him for so long.

Seed, the son of a renowned Cambridge University biophysicist, was ordered to pay back £600,000 but only paid back £50,000 – resulting in the extra sentence.

He was the last of the gang who stole £14m of jewellery from 73 safety deposit boxes at the London vault to be caught, having evaded police for four years.

Officers were initially in the dark about the identity of the man who had disabled the alarms and was one of two men who squeezed inside through a hole drilled in a wall from neighbouring premises. 

Seed was only tried and sentenced in 2019.

The latest blunder comes after more than 100 prisoners were accidentally released between April and December last year under successive Justice Secretaries Shabana Mahmood – now Home Secretary – and David Lammy, who took over in September.

Mr Lammy claimed to be working to tackle the problem of accidental releases, introducing ‘tighter checks’ that officers must go through before releasing a prisoner.

Prisoners mistakenly released last year included Hadush Kebatu in October. The Ethiopian asylum seeker had been convicted of sexually assaulting a 14-year-old schoolgirl days after arriving on a small boat.

Sir Iain Duncan Smith said: ‘There is an endemic problem with the prison service. Basic mistakes are enshrined in the system.

‘Perhaps the worst failing is that no one double checks on the existing requirements for prisoners.

‘The Labour government promised to change this but have utterly failed’.

The Ministry of Justice said Seed was ‘released in error’ from HMP High Down, in Sutton, Surrey, on August 12, 2025 and returned to custody only last Thursday, February 5.

Nothing is known of Seed was living or what he did during his release. The criminal’s former council flat in Islington has been relet and family members declined to comment.

Seed - son of the late Dr John Seed, who had helped to pioneer the science of DNA, working with Nobel Prize-winning scientists Francis Crick and James Watson in the 1960s - evaded police for so long by not using bank accounts or driving, and getting around on foot, using canal towpaths to avoid being filmed by CCTV.

He was originally jailed for 10 years for burglary and eight years for conspiring to hide the proceeds after a trial at Woolwich Crown Court.

Some £143,000 worth of gold ingots, gems and jewellery were found in a bedroom at his flat, where he is believed to have melted down gold and broke up jewellery on a workbench.

During sentencing, it was revealed Seed – who has a degree in physics and electronics from Nottingham University - was previously jailed for three years in 1984 for dealing in LSD, manufacturing the drug in his own lab.

A Ministry of Justice spokesperson said: ‘A prisoner who was released in error from HMP High Down last August has been returned to custody.

‘These cases have exposed deep-rooted issues across the broken justice system the Government inherited.

‘We’re determined to bear down on these mistakes and keep the public safe, which is why we’ve introduced tougher new checks, launched an independent investigation into releases in error and are investing millions to modernise technology to replace archaic paper-based systems.’

Seed ‘had served the required 50pc custodial period for the burglary offences’ and that the ‘miscalculation error occurred during the custodial period of the confiscation order’. 

Officials did not reveal why they had taken so long to rectify the blunder.

The Ministry of Justice added an independent investigation into releases in error is being conducted by Dame Lynne Owens which will ‘examine what is causing releases in error, identify systemic factors, assess whether current discharge protocols are robust, and make recommendations to bear down on future releases in error’.

In December, sources said the ‘downward trend’ in accidental releases quoted by Mr Lammy referred to the average monthly number of prisoners who were accidentally released, which stood at 21 a month last year, which had reduced to 12.

Some 262 inmates were mistakenly let out in the year to March 2025, up from 115 in the previous 12 months, according to government figures.

The other Hatton Garden raiders - dubbed the 'Diamond Wheezers' on account of their advanced ages - were all jailed in 2016 after admitting conspiracy to commit burglary.

Brian Reader, then 77, a career criminal who worked with notorious gangland figure and murderer Kenneth Noye on the infamous £26m Brink's-Mat gold bullion robbery in 1983, was jailed for six years and three months.

John "Kenny" Collins, then 75, Daniel Jones, 61, and Terry Perkins, 67, all received seven-year jail terms.

Reader died in 2023 after his release, while Perkins died in prison in 2018.