A blunder by officials has left wanted killers and rapists free for a year, it has been revealed.
Some have committed further offences, and now a major manhunt is under way to stop them claiming still more victims.
Last night critics accused ministers of trying to keep the scandal a secret. 
The blunder centres on a computer data disc containing details of 4,000 DNA profiles linked to serious crimes in the Netherlands.
Dutch authorities sent the “most wanted” disc to the office of the Attorney General in January 2007, asking for the profiles to be compared to the UK’s national DNA database.
It was passed on to the Crown Prosecution Service for the urgent checks to take place.
But the CPS lost the disc, which was discovered in a drawer only last month.
It was hurriedly passed to the National Police Improvement Agency, which holds the UK database of more than four million samples.
Now checks have found that at least 15 of the 4,000 wanted suspects are in the UK - and at least 11 of them have committed new crimes here, including serious assaults and burglaries.
The total is likely to climb much higher, as 2,000 DNA profiles have yet to be checked.
An urgent manhunt for the wanted suspects is now under way across England and Wales.
The data disc blunder is yet another security embarrassment for the Government
It is being led by a special “gold” team put together by the Association of Chief Police Officers.
Critics said all the crimes could have been avoided if the suspects, a mixture of UK and foreign nationals, had been rounded up for extradition in the first place.
They would now be safely locked away in a Dutch jail.
Shadow Home Secretary David Davis said: “Yet again we have a disastrous loss of data which has implications for British public safety and lets down another police force which is trying to track down serious criminals.”
The fiasco will lead to further awkward questions for Home Secretary Jacqui Smith, who is still reeling from claims of a “cover-up” over revelations that more than 10,000 illegal immigrants had been cleared to work as security guards.
Home Office sources were insisting last night that the loss of the disc had only recently come to the attention of ministers, and had not been kept quiet.
They were informed around three weeks ago that the disc had been found.
Details of its contents - and the implications for public safety - emerged later, around seven to ten days ago. Ministers were informed immediately, although it remained unclear whether Miss Smith was herself told.
Shadow Home Secretary David Davis: ‘Yet again we have a disastrous loss of data’
Officials denied they had been sitting on the information, claiming they did not want to alert the wanted criminals to the hunt for them.
In Whitehall, the blame was being laid firmly at the door of the CPS, headed by Director of Public Prosecutions Sir Ken Macdonald.
The disc was sent by the Dutch as ministers struggled to cope with another scandal.
At the time, it had just emerged that paedophiles and murderers convicted abroad could be working undetected in British schools.
A mountain of 27,000 criminal records belonging to UK citizens who had committed offences abroad had been allowed to gather dust rather than being entered on the Police National Computer.
As a result, there was a grave danger that the convictions would not be picked up by Criminal Records Bureau Checks, which clear people to work in schools or with vulnerable adults.
Tories are now questioning whether this blunder had contributed to the shambles over the lost CPS disc.
Last night, a CPS spokesman said the information they had checked included 2,000 of the DNA samples from the Netherlands.
He added: “These are profiles relating to unsolved crimes in that country.
“This is not a data security issue as this information was always in the possession of the CPS.
“As this information necessarily relates to ongoing police investigations it would be inappropriate to provide any more detail at this stage.”
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