Tonight:
4°c
Blunders freed killer... after two days he’d struck again
Martin Bentham and Justin Davenport4 Jun 2009
Serious failings across the criminal justice system which led to the brutal murder of French students Laurent Bonomo and Gabriel Ferez can be revealed today.
The blunders — involving the London probation service, the Met, the courts and the prison service — meant that
Dano Sonnex was released from jail without proper supervision and then allowed to stay free when he should have been returned to custody.
Many of the problems stemmed from poor communication between probation, police and law enforcement agencies and delays in processing the paperwork relating to Sonnex's case.
The first errors occurred when Sonnex was freed from jail on 8 February last year from an eight-year sentence imposed in 2003 for four robberies, one attempted robbery, possession of a blank-firing pistol with intent to commit robbery and assault with intent to resist arrest. Although he had previously been turned down for parole twice because of the danger that he might reoffend, there was no proper risk assessment despite his violent behaviour behind bars. In addition, a doctor's note saying that Sonnex had admitted he might kill was never passed on to the relevant agencies.
He was not placed under the supervision specified under the Mappa system and was only subject to limited oversight. On 10 February, only two days after his release an opportunity to correct this error occurred when police and the probation service were told of allegations that Sonnex had tied up and threatened a woman relative and her partner. No prosecution was possible because of a lack of witness testimony, but instead of referring Sonnex to a Mappa panel and ordering a new risk assessment that would have led to stricter supervision, the probation service merely issued him with a warning. Again, that meant that he remained under only low-level supervision.
Another critical failure occurred two months later after Sonnex was arrested on 23 April for handling stolen goods and remanded in custody by Greenwich magistrates. On 3 May probation officers began a “recall” process that would have returned Sonnex, who was still on licence from his prison term, to custody.
However on 16 May, Sonnex was given bail for the stolen goods charge after confusion led to the court thinking he would be kept in jail because of the recall for his earlier offence. In fact, the decision meant he went free, paving the way for the murders.
Even then, the killings could have been prevented, but for two further failings — one by the probation service and the other by the Met. The first was the failure to process the paperwork for Sonnex's recall to prison swiftly enough so that it was only on 13 June — six weeks after the process had started and nearly two months after he had reoffended — that police received the formal notice telling them that he should be back in custody.
Police inaction led to a further two-week delay before officers tried to track down Sonnex — by tragic coincidence on 29 June, the day of the double murders. Probation sources say that a cause of the delay in serving the recall notice was a communication problem between magistrates and a probation officer which prevented her completing the relevant papers.
