The admission by Home Office sources casts doubt not only on the system for expelling foreign prisoners but also on the monitoring of released murderers and the operation of the sex offenders register.

Sex attackers and killers from overseas should be supervised upon release in the same way as British-born offenders.

Hundreds of names from the list of 916 unaccounted-for criminals were passed last night to the Association of Chief Police Officers (Acpo) as the Home Office’s trawl became increasingly desperate.

Until late afternoon Acpo had been given just 80 names, including those of the most dangerous criminals, to check against the Police National Computer (PNC). But The Times has learnt that there is no active search in progress for any of the listed offenders.

The PNC will reveal only if someone on the list has subsequently reoffended or if a police force has gathered any intelligence about them. The database does not contain details of last known addresses of former offenders, and individual police forces have not been asked to investigate the whereabouts of criminals who live or have lived in their areas.

“We are checking our own database of recent cases but there has been no request from the Home Office for us to get directly involved,” a senior source at one force said.

Despite causing alarm by revealing that it does not know the whereabouts of the offenders the Home Office has refused to say who they are or give details of their offences.

The Times put the names of ten offenders whose deportation had been recommended or should have been considered upon their release to the Home Office. The department said that it was Home Office policy “not to comment on individual cases”.

The names submitted to the Home Office for comment are those of convicted offenders whose sentences have expired recently. Ahmed Mahdi, 27, was jailed for four years in October 2000 on charges of indecent assault and grievous bodily harm after he admitted having attacked a 59-year-old woman.

Middlesex Guildhall Crown Court was told that Mahdi, an Algerian, had 24 convictions since his arrival in Britain, aged 13, in 1992. Police said it was “ridiculous” that he had not previously been deported. A judge ordered his deportation at the end of his sentence but the Home Office will not say whether he is one of the 42 Algerians who have slipped through the net.

Razaq Assadullah, an illegal minicab driver, was convicted in 2002 of raping a 28-year-old woman in East London. He was jailed for eight years but would have become eligible for release after spending four years in custody. Assadullah, from Afghanistan, had been given leave to remain in Britain after claiming he had been tortured by the Taleban, but a judge recommended his deportation. There are ten Afghans among the 916 missing offenders.

The 175 Jamaicans on the Home Office’s missing list may include Stacey Atkins, Michael Wilson, Denise Wilson and Barbara Houghton, members of a crack cocaine gang who were convicted in Bristol in October 2001 and received sentences of five years or less. Judge John Foley called for the four to be deported on completion of their sentences but the Home Office will not say whether that has happened.

The deportation of two other Jamaicans, Christopher Howell and Orlando Francis, was recommended when they were jailed for eight years for the manslaughter and robbery of Adelle Hamilton, a lapdancer. The pair were sentenced in October 2002 but would have been required to serve four years from the date they were taken into custody which was several months earlier.

Two people with convictions for manslaughter are among the missing offenders.

Marcel Spirache, a Romanian, was jailed for 12 months for attempting to tamper with a bank cash dispenser in Hove, East Sussex, in April last year. Spirache had five other convictions for dishonesty and a judge said his presence in Britain was “detrimental to the public good”. There are 12 Romanians on the missing list. Andre N’Guessan, a Ghanian, should have been deported last year after serving ten years of a 20-year sentence for his role in a cocaine smuggling gang. The Home Office will not say whether he is among nine Ghanaian criminals unaccounted for.

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