A man claiming to know escaped serial rapist Benny Sela reported seeing him in the Sharon region on Sunday evening, two days after he fled police custody.

The witness, a resident of the Ein Sarid community, insisted that he recognized the escaped rapist riding a bicycle in the orchards near the residtial area. The witness said the cyclist fled when he called out to him.

Hundreds of officers deployed in the area following the report, along with a helicopter overhead to help locate the suspect.

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Police deployed a large force in the Hadar Yosef neighborhood in northeast Tel Aviv earlier in the evening, after a resident there reported seeing a man bearing resemblance to Sela.

Police ended the search after two hours of looking yielded no results.

The witness said the man fled after he called out to him, leading police forces in the area to take to the neighborhood streets to search for him.

A former victim of Sela's lived close to the area, and as a result police presence was at its maximum already in the neighborhood.

Meanwhile, the Fisher Foundation has offered a reward of NIS 100,000 to any civilian or officer who locates Benny Sela.

An investigation at the Labor Court in Tel Aviv on Sunday revealed that a secretary of Labor Court Judge Monica Margalit mistakenly sent an order with the wrong date to the Israel Prison Services, which consequently brought Benny Sela for a supposed hearing on Friday.

The police assume that the mistake is pure human error, and not a cooperative effort within the judicial system that helped Sela escape.

Earlier Sunday, police confirmed that a sighting of a man thought to be serial rapist Benny Sela, who escaped Friday in Tel Aviv, was in fact a false alarm.

Sela, who was sentenced to 35 years in prison for raping 14 women in the Tel Aviv area, escaped from police custody Friday morning as he was being escorted into a Tel Aviv courthouse.

Sela managed to scale the tall wall surrounding the courtyard where the Tel Aviv Magistrate's Court holds prisoners awaiting a hearing. He then jumped from the wall and fled.

Police on Sunday arrested a man near Netanya after a taxi driver reported that he had transported someone he believed to be Sela.

The taxi driver had told police that the man fled from his vehicle near Beit Yitzhak after he realized the driver was suspicious and was trying to lock the doors.

The cab driver told police the man had a similar build to Sela, was wearing a white T-shirt and blue sweatpants with a white stripe, and was barefoot and holding a pair of sandals.

The driver said he was "80 percent sure" the man, who appeared tired and hungry, was Sela.

Police believed the driver's testimony to be credible, and large number of police forces searched the area.

Close to 1 in the afternoon, with the help of local residents, Netanya police were able to locate the suspect who ran out of the taxi.

He was brought to headquarters that were set up in the entrance to the moshav Beit Yitzhak, where the taxi driver confirmed that the man was his passenger.

However, it turned out that the passenger, a resident of Or Yehudah, was wanted for investigation by the police. He was suspected of leaving carcasses at house entrances of acquaintances and threatening them. Police took the suspect into custody.

The initial police probe into Sela's escape revealed a series of severe operational failures both on the part of police and the Israel Prison Service with respect to the guarding of dangerous felons.

The "black box" of the affair is the reconstruction of the events of Friday morning at the Nitzan Prison in Ramle, at which two policemen arrived to transfer Sela to a hearing in Tel Aviv.

The investigation shows that the IPS had not informed the police ahead of time that the prisoner to be picked up and transported to Tel Aviv for a hearing at the Labor Court was classified as being at "high flight risk."

The police who arrived at the Nitzan Prison to pick up another prisoner suspected of fraud were also asked to take Sela with them, because of a computer-generated note stating that a hearing had been set for Sela that morning.

The warders had not been informed four days in advance that Sela was to be transported, as they normally are, and thus were not able to prepare properly for the task.

Sela, who usually goes twice a month for hearings before the courts involving a variety of petitions he submits, is always accompanied by four armed guards. According to procedure, he is also to be shackled hand and foot.

The two police who came to Nitzan on Friday decided, for unknown reasons, to agree to the warders' request to transport Sela, despite the fact that they were unprepared for the task. They came out of the facility escorting the two prisoners, without Sela's feet being shackled in accordance with orders.

Eye-witnesses said that when they saw Sela later, as he was fleeing, they did not notice handcuffs. The police expressed concern that Sela was wearing neither hand nor leg restraints during transport.

Only after the police escorting Sela were on their way to Tel Aviv did they realize, through phone calls they received, that Sela was not scheduled to have a hearing in Tel Aviv after all. However, instead of turning back, they decided to keep going so as not to bring the second prisoner to his hearing late.

Another significant failing to be scrutinized concerns the circumstances under which the document summoning Sela to the hearing turned up. The IPS computers show an official summons to a court hearing, although no such hearings take place on Fridays.

The Prison Service claims that the Courts Administration updated their computer system regarding the non-existent hearing. The Courts Administration, on the other hand, says it never sent the summons. Another check revealed that Sela did indeed have an upcoming court appearence, but not until next month.

The IPS's computer receives only data entered by Prison Service personnel. The Courts Administration sends a document summoning a prisoner to court; an IPS clerk types it into the system. The question now is whether the fictitious summons was the result of a clerical error, or an inside job.

The special investigative team of the Central Unit of the Tel Aviv District Police will be looking into the circumstances of Sela's escape, while the Yarkon District police continue their search for the serial rapist.

Prison source: Sela planned escape long in advance
A source in the Eshel Prison, where Benny Sela was incarcerated prior to his escape, said Saturday that the escape was apparently not opportunistic and had been planned for some time. According to the source, Sela often ran during his yard time and recently began wearing running shoes he got from another inmate.

On Thursday, before being taken by the police escort to Ramle Prison, from which he was taken to the Labor Court on Friday morning, Sela told a few prisoners that he was sure to be sent to an isolation cell upon his return since he was carrying forged documents.

He even asked one inmate to telephone his mother and ask her to request that internal prison warden detectives investigate the forgeries. The assumption is that Sela was preparing for the possibility that he would not succeed in escaping and the documents summoning him to the Labor Court would be discovered, in which case he could claim that he was not involved. The proof: He himself initiated the investigation.

Sela was constantly submitting hearing requests to various courts, including labor and small claims courts, whose relatively light security may have figured in his escape plans.

Public Security Minister Avi Dichter appointed an external inquiry committee to determine how Sela managed to escape, which will hold its first meeting on Sunday. Dichter has asked it to present its findings by Thursday.

The committee will be chaired by former Defense Ministry director general Amos Yaron, and its deputy chair will be Mickey Barel, on Saturday: "It's completely clear that when I appointed such senior people to head the committee, its mandate will not be to deal solely with the lowly guards."

The two police guards from whom Sela escaped have been suspended.