'Runaway' prisoner identified in handcuff bolt-cutting video after hospital escape

A man has been jailed for 10 months after police anonymously received a WhatsApp video showing him using a bolt cutter to try to free a “fugitive” Bradford burglar from his handcuffs.

The criminal was arrested by police last October but while being taken to Bradford Royal Infirmary for treatment of an injury, he suddenly broke free from his escort and fled on foot.

Prosecutor Victoria Barker told Bradford Crown Court on Wednesday that officers had failed to find their prisoner, but a colleague later received the video showing Hamas Khan using the tool to cut the handcuffs. Khan's first name was heard in the video and he was later identified as being involved in the incident.

Learn more: 'I transformed the roughest pub in East Yorkshire – there's one rule everyone must follow'

The fugitive was not arrested until about seven weeks later and was eventually jailed for burglary, theft and escaping from lawful custody. Despite extensive police efforts to track down Khan, the 25-year-old evaded arrest until March this year, when police tracked him down in a top-floor flat.

When he was arrested, Khan had climbed onto a balcony 15 metres up, but he was eventually arrested after he was able to climb down to the balcony below. Khan, of no fixed abode, was jailed for four years in 2019 for conspiracy to burgle and was still on parole when he committed the offence last October of assisting an offender.

He pleaded guilty at a previous crown court hearing and today Judge Ahmed Nadim said his actions constituted “an attack on the criminal justice system”.

The judge was told Khan was still an immature young man and easily influenced by others, but he said Khan must have known the man he was helping had been apprehended by police. Judge Nadim said: “You must have known from your past experience of the criminal justice system that what you did was serious misconduct and constituted an attack on the operation of the criminal justice system.

“You were not located for a long period of time and when the police located you, you behaved in a way that was not designed to co-operate with being returned to custody.”

He concluded that Khan had actively avoided attracting the attention of authorities. Judge Nadim told Khan he would have been jailed for 15 months if found guilty after a trial, but his guilty plea meant that sentence could be reduced to 10 months.