A British soldier who escaped from prison by clinging to the bottom of a food truck has been found guilty of spying for Iran.
Daniel Khalife, 23, dramatically changed his plea midway through his trial to admit escaping HMP Wandsworth and going on the run for three days in September last year.
Now, following a trial at Woolwich Crown Court, he has been further convicted of three charges linked to two years he spent passing sensitive information to agents of Iran.
Jurors rejected Khalife’s story that he had actually been undertaking a one-man ‘double agent’ mission after being told his Iranian heritage would stop him getting his dream role in British intelligence.
Khalife’s own lawyer even accepted the ‘hapless’ operation bore more resemblance to Scooby Doo than James Bond.
Wearing a blue shirt and pale trousers, Khalife calmly replaced his glasses as the verdicts were read out and did not show any emotion. He now faces decades behind bars.
Daniel Khalife appeared in court today wearing a blue shirt and pale trousers. He calmly replaced his glasses as the verdicts were read out and did not show any emotion
Khalife, 23, who escaped from prison by clinging to the bottom of a food truck, was found guilty of spying for Iran
Khalife is seen here after his arrest on a canal towpath on September 9 last year after being caught by police
Khalife is pictured here (wearing a light-coloured T-shirt, and shorts) in police bodycam footage during his arrest
Downing Street said today that Sir Keir Starmer ‘welcomes the verdict and that justice has been served’.
The Prime Minister’s official spokesman added: ‘It was obviously a complex case, and we thank our security partners, the police and the Crown Prosecution Service, for their work to uncover this individual’s crimes and bring them to justice.’
Asked whether the Prime Minister was concerned Iran had managed to recruit a British soldier, the spokesman added: ‘We’ve always been very clear that the behaviour of the Iranian regime poses a threat to the safety and security of the UK and our allies.
‘This was an isolated incident, but we take these incidents extremely seriously, and more broadly, it is why we continue to take strong action and hold the Iranian regime to account.
‘We have sanctioned more than 450 Iranian individuals and entities, including the IRGC (Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps) in its entirety, as well as individual commanders.’
Meanwhile, one of the country’s most senior counter-terrorism officers said Khalife was ‘the ultimate Walter Mitty character’, but one whose crimes had an ‘extremely significant impact in the real world’.
Khalife had joined the Army at 16, but was left ‘devastated’ when he was told halfway through his training that his heritage would stop him getting the security clearance required to work in intelligence at ‘the sharp end’ of the military.
He almost immediately set about trying to make contact with agents of Iran – which he eventually managed after sending a message to a sanctioned Iranian on Facebook.
Over the months that followed, he passed bogus secret documents he wrote on his laptop to an agent calling himself ‘David Smith’.
The Iranians were pleased with his work – despite many of the documents being littered with typos – and Khalife collected £1,500 in a dog poo bag from them in a north London park in 2019.
Even though the documents were fake, he was accused in court of ‘endangering’ British-Iranian mother Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe with a fictious Government dossier written while she was still be ‘cynically’ detained by the regime in Tehran.
His willingness to betray his country, however, appeared to escalate when he joined the Royal Corps of Signals in Staffordshire.
Once there, he started giving his handler sensitive information relating to his work – including pictures of military equipment and classified documents.
He tried to email MI6 twice to tell them what he was doing, but was ignored. He continued to operate under the radar until two years later when he rang MI5 twice to volunteer himself as a double agent.
An asterisk and the word ‘failed’ next to the date of August 21 in Daniel Khalife’s prison diary, the date of his ‘fake’ escape attempt
A photo issued by Metropolitan Police showing an asterisk next to the date of September 6 in Khalife’s prison diary, the date of his escape
Khalife is seen on CCTV preparing to slip out of custody while working in the kitchens at HMP Wandsworth – triggering a huge nationwide manhunt
A CCTV image of the lorry Khalife was on during his escape from HMP Wandsworth prison
The sling under the truck used in the prison escape by Khalife. This image was shown to the jury during his trial
Khalife walking along George Street in Richmond, London, on September 6 2023
Khalife walking past the White Cross Pub in Richmond, London, on September 6 2023
MI5 passed the information to the police who were able to identify Khalife and arrest him by tracing the number he had used to ring the intelligence agency.
During a year spent on bail between January 2022 and January 2023, Khalife claimed he hatched a new plan – inspired by the TV series Homeland on Netflix – to stage a ‘pretend defection’ to Iran.
In the series, he said, a US intelligence agent appears to defect to Iran but is still loyal to her own country and continues passing information back to the West.
Khalife visited the Iranian embassy on two occasions during the course of that year to try to get an Iranian passport, before absconding from his barracks in January 2023.
For around 20 days, Khalife lived in the back of a van with around £20,000 in cash and the apparent intention of leaving the country for a glorious future in Iran.
His plan came unstuck, however, when he was spotted by an Army colleague in a leisure centre in Stone, Staffordshire, and promptly arrested by the police.
Khalife was charged and remanded in custody at HMP Wandsworth where, eight months later, he escaped while awaiting trial – triggering a huge nationwide manhunt.
He was able to slip out of the prison estate by exploiting his role as a kitchen chef to attach a sling made from torn kitchen trousers to the bottom of a food delivery lorry.
Khalife was captured on CCTV at a Mountain Warehouse store placing a blue cap into his Waitrose bag
Khalife pictured on September 7 2023 walking past a security guard at a Sainsbury’s store in King’s Street, Hammersmith
Khalife purchasing items on September 7 2023 at a Sainsbury’s store in King’s Street, Hammersmith
Khalife is seen exiting the Marks and Spencer’s store in Kew, London on September 7
Khalife at a branch of McDonald’s branch in Uxbridge Road, Southall, London, on September 9
Messages on a phone screen between Khalife and ‘David Smith’. In one exchange Smith says he looks forward to seeing the soldier in ‘Tehran… pal’
The above two images show the false documents (some contents blurred) sent by Khalife to Iranian contacts
On the morning of September 6 last year, the oblivious driver climbed into his vehicle after dropping off a delivery and whisked the stowaway to freedom.
Although spectacularly audacious, his escape below the lorry did not allow much time for enjoyment.
He later said: ‘Oh my god, even 10 miles an hour you…you feel it.
‘You see the floor going faster and faster and faster. And the lorry shakes, and it’s hot and steaming and you’re banging your head.
‘It’s unbelievably dangerous.’
But Khalife insisted he had no intention of remaining on the run for good. His motivation for escaping was entirely linked to his desire for a cushty new cell once recaptured, he claimed.
He told jurors he wanted to be caught so he could be moved to a high-security unit (HSU) away from sex offenders and terrorists in HMP Belmarsh.
Prosecutor Mark Heywood KC suggested during cross-examination that this was nonsense, and Khalife had actually hoped to be spirited away with the help of the Iranians.
This was supported, he said, by a message to his Iranian handler that had been recovered from a cheap smartphone he bought while on the run, which said simply: ‘I wait.’
Khalife is seen here at a McDonald’s in London on September 9
Khalife is seen in the CCTV image above at a McDonald’s branch in Uxbridge Road, Southall, London
Khalife at a branch of McDonald’s branch in Uxbridge Road, Southall, London, on September 9
Khalife has been convicted of three charges linked to two years he spent passing sensitive information to agents of Iran
Khalife at a branch of Marks and Spencer’s in Kew, London, on September 7
A M&S receipt showing items of clothing totalling £35.60 which were paid for in cash
An image of Khalife’s passport showing a stamp with a return date from Istanbul, in Turkey
Khalife is seen here at a newsagents in Grove Park Road, Chiswick, London, following his escape from prison
Khalife bought a Samsung phone for £89 from a shop in King Street, Hammersmith, after he escaped from prison
Daniel Khalife went shopping in M&S while on the run
Khalife at a newsagents in Grove Park Road, Chiswick, London, on September 8 2023
A photo of a blue cap found with Daniel Khalife when he was arrested
The interior of Khalife’s room at his barracks at MoD Stafford. Items including an iron, honey nut cereal and a smoothie maker can be seen messily arranged on shelving
Mr Heywood told Khalife: ‘You weren’t doing this to get into the high-security unit – if you could have escaped, you would have, and you wanted the Iranians to help you do it.’
Khalife was eventually arrested on September 9 by a plain clothes police officer after he was spotted riding a stolen bicycle northbound out of central London.
After being wrestled to the floor, Khalife was said to have congratulated the officer for catching him.
Giving evidence during the trial, Khalife spent several hours describing in detail how he had escaped, while preposterously still pleading not guilty to escaping lawful custody.
The exasperated prosecutor demanded that the judge put the charge to him again and, when she did, he changed his plea to guilty mid-trial.
Following the verdicts, Commander Dominic Murphy, head of the Met Police’s counter-terror command, said of Khalife: ‘He is, I think, the ultimate Walter Mitty character. The problem is, he’s a Walter Mitty character that was having an extremely significant impact in the real world.
‘The reality is, he provided highly sensitive, protectively marked information to the Iranian state. We know very well the threat the Iranian government poses to the United Kingdom’s national security.
‘Only he will know why he was doing this, I do believe there is some of this that fitted into his own fantasies, but he caused a substantial amount of damage in doing so.’
The police investigation into Khalife’s escape from prison is said to be ‘ongoing’, with a 24-year-old man and a 25-year-old woman arrested earlier this year on suspicion of assisting an offender.
The trial heard that after escaping, Khalife used the landline of a pub in Richmond, west London, to ring several numbers of contacts he had made while in custody.
Later that evening, he was met by an individual who gave him £400 in cash.
The disgraced soldier was convicted by a jury of committing an act prejudicial to the safety or interests of the state and eliciting information about members of the armed forces. He was found not guilty of perpetrating a bomb hoax.
Items of clothing and a blue cap can be seen stuffed inside Khalife’s Waitrose bag
A red T-shirt branded with the logo of Turkish hotel Delphin. The item of clothing was found with Khalife when he was arrested
A Mountain Warehouse sleeping bag that was in Khalife’s possession at the time of his arrest
The bicycle Khalife was riding that a plains-clothes police officer pushed him off before he was arrested
Khalife’s bike and Waitrose bag at the Grand Union Canal towpath near Rowdell Road, Northolt, London, where the soldier was arrested
Bethan David, Head of the Counter Terrorism Division at the Crown Prosecution Service, said: ‘As a serving soldier of the British Army Daniel Khalife was employed and entrusted to uphold and protect the national security of this country. But, for purposes of his own, Daniel Khalife, used his employment to undermine national security.
‘He surreptitiously sought out and obtained copies of secret and sensitive information which he knew were protected and passed these on to individuals he believed to be acting on behalf of the Iranian state. The sharing of the information could have exposed military personnel to serious harm, or a risk to life, and prejudiced the safety and security of the United Kingdom.
‘The prosecution was able to use mobile phone evidence, notes written by Khalife himself and CCTV footage to piece together and demonstrate that Khalife had gathered and shared much of this classified information, accepted hundreds of pounds for his efforts and even travelled to Turkey as part of his unlawful conduct.
‘It is against the law to collate and share secret and sensitive information for a purpose against the interests of the United Kingdom. Such hostile and illegal activities jeopardise the national security of the United Kingdom, and the CPS will always seek to prosecute anyone that carries out counter state threats.’
A Government spokeswoman said: ‘We welcome today’s verdict. This was an incredibly complex case.
‘We thank our security partners, the police and the Crown Prosecution Service for their work to uncover this individual’s crimes and bring them to justice.’
How Wandsworth Prison escape lifted lid on ‘shocking’ level of chaos at scandal-hit jail
Daniel Khalife’s jail break shone a light on the ‘shocking’ level of chaos at HMP Wandsworth and brought the crisis in prisons across England and Wales to the fore.
The prisons watchdog described the scandal-hit Victorian jail as ‘symbolic of the problems that characterise what is worst about the English prison system’.
Khalife made his escape in September last year, while being held on remand over spy charges, by strapping himself underneath a food delivery lorry.
It emerged in court that two guards checked the truck with a torch and mirror and, with no apparent lockdown already in place, allowed it to leave the prison, despite telling the driver someone was missing.
Earlier this year inspectors said the turmoil they found at the category B south-west London prison was the result of ‘sustained decline permitted to happen in plain view of leaders’ and warned how prison guards did not always know where prisoners on their wings were, despite an investment of almost £900,000 since the escape.
HMP Wandsworth in London, where Khalife has pleaded guilty to escaping custody at the prison
The jail was ‘severely overcrowded’ when inspectors visited between April and May, holding more than 1,500 men when it only had capacity for 979.
Chief inspector of prisons Charlie Taylor was so concerned at the ‘systemic’ problems found, and the fears that the prison was not cutting the risk of reoffending as a result, that he called for HMP Wandsworth to be put into emergency measures.
Writing to then justice secretary Alex Chalk to issue a so-called urgent notification, Mr Taylor, who previously suggested the jail should be closed, said the prison was ‘still reeling’ from Khalife’s ‘very high-profile’ escape and that security remained a ‘serious concern’.
At the time, the Prison Governors’ Association (PGA) union said the development would be ‘of no surprise to the Government’, as the governor Katie Price resigned during the inspection and staff at the jail were in an ‘almost impossible situation’.
Detailed inspection findings, published in August, described how record keeping at the jail was ‘so poor’, with staff displaying an ‘inability to account for prisoners during the working day’.
More than half of the men inspectors spoke to said it was easy to get hold of drugs, while the watchdog’s report said the smell of cannabis was ‘ubiquitous’.
The findings concluded that ‘inexperience’ across every grade of staff was preventing them from ‘bringing about much needed change’.
While the overcrowding crisis ‘compounded the pressures’, Mr Taylor said troubled Wandsworth’s problems ‘did not appear overnight’.
Although hard-working staff ‘persevered’, the prison had clearly been identified as ‘struggling’, he said as he called for ‘comprehensive, long-term solutions’.
Justice Secretary Shabana Mahmood said this was the ‘reality of a prison system in crisis’.
She stressed the Government’s determination to tackle the problems and set out how the Ministry of Justice (MoJ) would send in specialist staff and redirect £100 million from across the prison service to spend over five years to ‘deliver urgent improvements’ at the jail.
Since November 2022, the prisons watchdog has issued an urgent notification on nine jails, including Wandsworth.
Government figures published in July showed the performance of more than 40% of adult prisons in England and Wales were rated of ‘concern’, as levels of violence and self-harm soared.
Out of the 119 adult prisons, just over four in 10 (42% or 50) were rated of ‘concern’ or ‘serious concern’, according to PA news agency analysis of the data for the year to March.
Wandsworth was among 15 prisons considered to be of serious concern. The number of prisons given this rating increased by six since the previous 12-month period.
An audit carried out in the wake of Khalife’s escape found a raft of security failings at the jail, another report published in August said.
HMP Wandsworth’s Independent Monitoring Board (IMB), made up of volunteers tasked by ministers with scrutinising conditions in custody, said ’81 points of failure’ were identified in the review carried out in November last year, and resulted in ‘long overdue’ upgrades being made to CCTV cameras which had not worked for more than a year.
The incident led to multiple reviews and action, including ‘previously unavailable funding’ being found for security improvements and ‘significant investment’ in a bid to stop ‘illicit items’ being taken into the prison, according to the IMB.
Another internal review completed in December made 39 recommendations for improvement, according to the IMB.
The MoJ is yet to publish those documents, outline their findings or confirm whether any disciplinary action against staff at the prison has been taken.
Mr Chalk previously committed to detailing the findings of the MoJ’s investigations, ordered in the wake of Khalife’s escape, once his trial concluded.
But the government department is yet to confirm whether Ms Mahmood has agreed to do the same now she is in post.
