Woman charged after viral Wandsworth Prison video showed ‘officer having sex with inmate’
Linda De Sousa Abreu, 30, will appear at Uxbridge Magistrates’ Court on Monday
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A woman has been charged in relation to a video shared on social media that allegedly showed a prison officer having sex with an inmate in a cell.
Linda De Sousa Abreu, 30, of Fulham in southwest London, has been charged with misconduct in public office, the Metropolitan Police said. She remains in custody and will appear at Uxbridge Magistrates’ Court on Monday.
A police investigation was launched on Friday after officers were made aware of a video said to have been filmed inside HMP Wandsworth. An arrest was made later that day and Ms De Sousa Abreu was charged on Saturday, police added.
In a statement, a Met Police spokesperson said: “A police investigation was launched on 28 June after officers were made aware of a video filmed inside HMP Wandsworth. A woman was arrested on suspicion of misconduct in public office later that day.”
HMP Wandsworth was in the headlines last year following a nationwide manhunt for inmate Daniel Khalife in September 2023.
The 22-year-old former member of the Royal Signals allegedly strapped himself to the underside of a food delivery van in an attempt to escape, before being arrested four days later in Chiswick after he was pulled from a bicycle by a plainclothes counterterrorism officer.
Khalife is due to go on trial at the Old Bailey in October after pleading not guilty to charges alleging he escaped from HMP Wandsworth. He has also pleaded not guilty to three other charges, in alleged breaches of the Terrorism Act, Criminal Law Act, and Official Secrets Act.
These respectively include charges that he elicited or attempted to elicit information of a kind likely to be useful to a potential terrorist, in August 2021, and that he placed “three canisters with wires on a desk in his accommodation” to cause alarm that the object was “likely to explode or ignite”, either on or before 2 January 2023.
Both incidents are alleged to have taken place at Beacon Barracks in Staffordshire.
The fourth charge sees Khalife accused of obtaining, collecting, recording, publishing or communicating information that could be useful to an enemy, between May 2019 and January 2022.
The trial in October is scheduled to last for eight weeks.