A former British soldier who escaped from Wandsworth Prison has been found guilty of spying for Iran.

Daniel Khalife, 23, who was a lance corporal in the Royal Signals, used a sling made from trousers worn by inmates working in the kitchen to cling to the underside of a food delivery lorry on 6 September last year.

He was being held in the Category B prison accused of handing secret information, including a list of soldiers – some of whom were serving in the SAS – to Iranian spies.

MI5, the Ministry of Defence and counter-terrorism police launched a nationwide manhunt, fearing Khalife would try to flee to Tehran or get to the Iranian embassy in London.

Woolwich Crown Court heard that while on the run he bought a mobile phone to call his handlers, who used the code name “David Smith”, and sent the message: “I wait.”

But Khalife was arrested on the morning of 9 September when he was spotted riding a stolen mountain bike along the canal towpath in Northolt, west London – about 14 miles away from Wandsworth Prison.

He initially pleaded not guilty to an escape charge but changed his plea after describing the break-out to jurors, saying it showed “what a foolish idea it was to have someone of my skillset in prison”.

Khalife, who first contacted an Iranian spy soon after he joined the Army aged 16, claimed he wanted to be a “double agent” and “thought he could be James Bond” but had only passed on fake or useless information.

Giving evidence, he described himself as an English “patriot”, adding: “I’m certainly not a terrorist or a traitor.”

But he was found guilty of a charge of gathering, publishing or communicating information that might be useful to an enemy between 1 May 2019 and 6 January 2022, under the Official Secrets Act.

Khalife, from Kingston, in southwest London, was also found guilty of eliciting personal information about armed forces personnel that was likely to be useful to a person committing or preparing an act of terrorism on 2 August 2021.

The charge related to a photo of a handwritten list of 15 soldiers, including some from special forces serving in the Special Air Service (SAS) and Special Boat Service (SBS).

Khalife was found not guilty of perpetrating a bomb hoax at his barracks in January 2023.

‘The ultimate Walter Mitty’

Dominic Murphy, the head of the Metropolitan Police’s counter-terrorism command, said while Khalife’s approach was “amateurish” with elements of “fantasy”, the reality was he provided “highly sensitive” information to the Iranian state.

“He’s the ultimate Walter Mitty character,” he said. “The problem is he’s a Walter Mitty character that was having an extremely significant impact on the real world.”

A Walter Mitty character is someone who is ordinary but has an extraordinary imagination and daydreams about personal triumphs to escape their dull life.

Mr Murphy said the “game” played by Khalife to “fuel his ego” posed “a significant risk to national security” and he had “enjoyed the thrill of the deception throughout”.

Police have disrupted 20 direct plots from the Iranian government, including assignations or immediate threats to life, and the state’s agents “pose a very real threat to national security and to individuals here in the UK”, Mr Murphy said.

Khalife told the jury he contacted an Iranian agent through Facebook because he wanted to endear himself to the UK security services after he was told he couldn’t pass developed vetting to fulfil his dream of working in intelligence because his mother was born in Iran.

Dead drops

Khalife left material in public locations in exchange for cash in an old-fashioned spy tactic known as the “dead drop” or “dead letter box”.

He first collected £1,500 in a dog poo bag in Mill Hill Park in Barnet, north London, in August 2019 and made a second £1,000 cash pick-up from Kensal Green Cemetery, in North Kensington, in October 2021.

He twice travelled from his barracks, in Staffordshire, to the Iranian embassy in South Kensington, in London, and even flew to Istanbul, where he stayed in the Hilton hotel between 4 and 10 August 2020, and “delivered a package” for Iranian agents, the court heard.

The contact continued while he was deployed to Fort Hood, Texas, where he received training in Falcon, a military communications system.

Khalife repeatedly contacted the British security services himself saying he wanted to be a “double agent”, but MI5 reported him to police, who arrested him.

While on bail, he went AWOL from his base, leaving a device made from three laughing gas canisters bound with sniper tape on his desk.

He stayed in a stolen Ford Transit van, later found containing a camp bed, around £20,000, and notes saying he wanted to defect to Iran.

Prosecutors said he planned to leave the country, having previously travelled to Turkey as a test for onward travel to Iran, and he was in contact with his Iranian handlers, making attempts to get to the embassy.

But he was arrested again three weeks later after a colleague spotted him in the leisure centre. He was then held on remand in Wandsworth Prison, where he managed to get a job in the kitchen.

Escape planned for ‘quite some time’

Khalife told the jury he planned the escape because he wanted to be moved to the high-security unit in Belmarsh to avoid sex predators and terrorists who wanted to do him harm.

Police believe he had been planning the “pretty audacious” break-out for “quite some time” and he wrote in his prison diary of a “failed” escape attempt on 21 August last year.

Khalife told the jury he attached the makeshift rope to the Bidfood lorry on 1 September to test prison security as it made its daily deliveries.

“When I had made the decision to actually leave the prison I was going to do it properly,” he said, describing how he concealed himself, resting his back on the sling as the vehicle was searched.

The driver Balazs Werner said two guards told him someone was missing as they checked the truck with a torch and mirror and he was surprised he was allowed to drive off and that the prison wasn’t in lockdown.

Khalife said he waited for the lorry to stop, dropped to the ground and lay in the prone position until it moved off.

He used the phone at the Rose of York pub in Richmond before a contact withdrew £400 from a nearby cashpoint, which he used to buy a sleeping bag, a mobile phone and a change of clothes.

CCTV footage captured his movements as he bought clothes from Marks & Spencer, stole a hat from Mountain Warehouse, drank coffee at McDonald’s and even read about his escape in the newspaper.

When he was arrested on the footpath of the Grand Union Canal in Northolt after four days on the run, Khalife told police: “My body aches. I f****d myself up under the lorry” and “I don’t know how immigrants do it”.

Police said he had no help from anyone inside prison, Iran or close family members in London but a 24-year-old man and a 25-year-old woman were arrested earlier this year on suspicion of assisting an offender and the investigation is ongoing.

The prisons watchdog called for Wandsworth to be put into emergency measures in the wake of Khalife’s escape, while a security audit identified “81 points of failure” and resulted in “long overdue” upgrades to CVTV cameras which hadn’t worked for more than a year.

The Ministry of Justice (MoJ) later announced it would be redirecting £100m from across the prison service to spend over five years on bringing in “urgent improvements”.

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Meanwhile, Bethan David, from the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS), 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.

“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.

“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.”