Daniel Khalife: Former soldier who escaped from Wandsworth Prison guilty of spying for Iran
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.”
Khalife was arrested on 9 September. Pic: Met Police
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.
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From October: Jurors shown CCTV of Khalife after escape
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.
Daniel Khalife joined the Army aged 16
‘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.
A selfie of Daniel Khalife in Mill Hill Park. Pic: Met Police
Khalife collected cash in a dog poo bag. Pic: Met Police
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.
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Sky’s Shamaan Freeman-Powell reports from Woolwich Crown Court
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.
Khalife left a fake device. Pic: Met Police
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.
Khalife escaped under a Bidfood lorry. Pic: PA
Khalife used a makeshift sling. Pic: Met Police
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.
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From October: Khalife caught on CCTV. Pic: Met Police
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.”
The last blast furnaces left operating in Britain could see their fate sealed within days, after their Chinese owners took the decision to cut off the crucial supply of ingredients keeping them running.
Jingye, the owner of British Steel in Scunthorpe, has, according to union representatives, cancelled future orders for the iron ore, coal and other raw materials needed to keep the furnaces running.
The upshot is that they may have to close next month – even sooner than the earliest date suggested for its closure.
Read more: Thousands of jobs at risk as British Steel consults unions over closure
The fate of the blast furnaces – the last two domestic sources of virgin steel, made from iron ore rather than recycled – is likely to be determined in a matter of days, with the Department for Business and Trade now actively pondering nationalisation.
The upshot is that even as Britain contends with a trade war across the Atlantic, it is now working against the clock to secure the future of steelmaking at Scunthorpe.
The talks between the government and Jingye broke down last week after the Chinese company, which bought British Steel out of receivership in 2020, rejected a £500m offer of public money to replace the existing furnaces with electric arc furnaces.
The sum is the same one it offered to Tata Steel, which has shut down the other remaining UK blast furnaces in Port Talbot and is planning to build electric furnaces – which have far lower carbon emissions.
These steel workers could soon be out of work
However, the owners argue that the amount is too little to justify extra investment at Scunthorpe, and said last week they were now consulting on the date of shutting both the blast furnaces and the attached steelworks.
Since British Steel is the main provider of steel rails to Network Rail – as well as other construction steels available from only a few sites in the world – the closure would leave the UK more reliant on imports for critical infrastructure sites.
However, since the site belongs to its Chinese owners, a decision to nationalise the site would involve radical steps government officials are wary of taking.
They also fear leaving taxpayers exposed to a potentially loss-making business for the long run.
The dilemma has been heightened by the sharp turn in geopolitical sentiment following Donald Trump’s return to the White House.
The incipient trade war and threatened cut in American support to Europe have sparked fresh calls for countries to act urgently to secure their own supplies of critical materials, especially those used for defence and infrastructure.
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Gareth Stace, head of UK Steel, the industry lobby group, said: “Talks seem to have broken down between government and British Steel.
“My advice to government is: please, Jonathan Reynolds, Business Secretary, get back round that negotiating table, thrash out a deal, and if a deal can’t be found in the next few days, then I fear for the very future of the sector, but also here for Scunthorpe steelworks.”
British Steel declined to comment.
UK
Prince Andrew’s Pitch@Palace branded ‘crude attempt to enrich himself’ as Chinese spy documents set to be released
Prince Andrew’s efforts to make money from his Pitch@Palace project have been branded as a “crude attempt to enrich himself” at the expense of “unsuspecting tech founders”, as new documents may shed more light on what he and his team have been attempting to sell.
Today is the deadline for documents to be released relating to Prince Andrew‘s former senior adviser Dominic Hampshire and his interactions with the alleged Chinese spy Yang Tengbo.
In February, an immigration tribunal heard how the intelligence services had contacted Mr Hampshire about Mr Yang back in 2022. Mr Yang helped set up Pitch@Palace China, a branch of the duke’s scheme to help young entrepreneurs.
The alleged Chinese spy, Yang Tengbo, has links with Prince Andrew
Yang Tengbo. Pic: Pitch@Palace
Judges banned Mr Yang from the UK, saying his association with a senior royal had made Prince Andrew “vulnerable” and posed a threat to national security. Mr Yang challenged that decision at the Special Immigration Appeals Commission (SIAC).
Since that hearing, media organisations have applied for certain documents relating to the case and Mr Hampshire’s support for Mr Yang to be made public. SIAC agreed to release some information of public interest. It is hoped they may include more details on deals that he was trying to do on behalf of Prince Andrew.
So what do we know about potential deals for Pitch@Palace so far?
In February, Sky News confirmed that palace officials had a meeting last summer with tech funding company StartupBootcamp to discuss a potential tie-up between them and Prince Andrew relating to his Pitch@Palace project.
The palace wasn’t involved in the fine details of a deal but wanted guarantees to make sure it wouldn’t impact the Royal Family in the future. Sky News understands from one source that the price being discussed for Pitch was around £750,000 – there are, however, reports that a deal may have stalled.
Photos we found on the Chinese Chamber of Commerce website show an event held in Asia between StartupBootcamp and Innovate Global, believed to be an offshoot of Pitch.
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Who is alleged Chinese spy, Yang Tengbo?
Documents, released in relation to the investigations into Mr Tengbo, have also shown how much the duke has always seen Pitch as a way of potentially making money. One document from 21 August 2021 clearly states “the duke needed money at the time, and saw the relationships with China through Pitch as one possible source of funding”.
But Prince Andrew’s apparent intention to use Pitch to make money has led to concerns about whether he is unfairly using the contacts and information he gained when he was a working royal.
Norman Baker, former MP and author of books on royal finances, believes it is “a crude attempt to enrich himself” and goes against what the tech entrepreneurs thought they were signing up for.
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He told Sky News: “The data given by these business people was given on the basis it was an official operation and not something for Prince Andrew, and so in my view, Prince Andrew had no right legally or morally to take the data which has been collected, a huge amount of data, and sell it…
“And quite clearly if you’re going to sell it off to StartupBootcamp, that is not what people had in mind. The entrepreneurs who joined Pitch@Palace did not do so to enrich Prince Andrew,” he said.
Rich Wilson was one tech entrepreneur who was approached at the start of Pitch@Palace to sign up, but he stepped away when he spotted a clause in the contract saying they’d be entitled to 2% equity in any funding he secured.
He feels Prince Andrew is continuing to use those he made a show of supporting.
He said: “It makes me feel sick. I think it’s terrible – that he is continuing to exploit unsuspecting tech founders in this way. A lot of them, I’m quite grey and old in the tooth now, I saw it coming, but clearly most didn’t. And a lot of them were quite young.
“It’ll be their first venture and you’re learning on the trot, so to speak. So to take advantage of people in such a major way – that’s an awful, sickening thing to do.”
We approached StartupBootcamp who said they had no comment to make, and the Duke of York’s office did not respond.
With reports that a deal may have stalled, it could be a big setback for the duke – especially with questions still about how he’ll continue to pay for his home on the Windsor estate now that the King no longer gives him financial support.
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