It's now five days since Abdul Ezedi went on the run after throwing a corrosive substance over a woman and her young child in a residential street in South London.
His last known movements, according to the Met, were last Wednesday night, when he was seen at Tower Hill Underground station in east London, shortly after the attack in Clapham.
CCTV footage showed he has “significant injuries to the right side of his face”.
Metropolitan Police detectives are working around the clock to try to figure out where Ezedi is and whether he's being hidden by friends or associates. Or even, whether he’s dead.
This weekend, the officer leading the investigation announced a reward of £20,000 for information leading to his arrest.
That would suggest, according to GBN police sources, that Ezedi is still alive and most likely being sheltered by people he knows.
The reward, detectives hope, might tempt one of those people to give him up.
The fact that the Met's latest appeal has also been transmitted across social media in Farsi, Ezedi's native language, means detectives are working on the theory that those who might be protecting him are from his own community.
Ezedi arrived in the UK from Afghanistan in 2016 on a lorry. He subsequently claimed asylum in either 2021 or 2022 after twice being denied settled status. During this time he settled in Newcastle.
Although Ezedi does have a previous conviction for sexual offences, police sources don't necessarily believe he is part of an organised crime group, although this is still one potential avenue of investigation. Sources suggest he might have called upon the network that smuggled him into the UK for help.
A raid on his home in the North East uncovered a quantity of chemicals similar to those used in the attacks. According to police “the liquid used in the attack was a very strong concentrated corrosive substance, either liquid sodium hydroxide or liquid sodium carbonate." Both of those compounds are used in detergents and to make soaps, while sodium hydroxide is also used in drain cleaners.
But this find doesn’t seem to shed any particular light on links to organised crime.
Abdul Ezedi is currently on the run
PASo where is he?
Those familiar with this type of investigation say the Met will be tracking Ezedi’s movements through public cameras, which has been a very effective method in previous cases.
Asked if the Met Police would now have a precise location for his whereabouts, a former senior detective said: “I think they’ll have a very good sense of what area he’s in."
As the net closes in on Ezedi and those who might be hiding him, the theories about where he is will continue to abound, until the manhunt reaches an inevitable conclusion.
