Prison escape: Former soldier Daniel Khalife jailed for 14 years and three months
A former British soldier who escaped from Wandsworth prison while awaiting trial for spying for Iran has been jailed for 14 years and three months.
Daniel Khalife, 23, sparked a nationwide manhunt after clinging to the underside of a food delivery lorry to break out of the Category B jail on 6 September last year.
He evaded capture for three days before he was spotted riding a stolen mountain bike along the canal towpath in Northolt, west London – about 14 miles away.
Khalife, who was a lance corporal in the Royal Signals, was being held on remand accused of using his role in the military to pass secret information to Iranian spies.
He was arrested after telling the British security services he wanted to be a “double agent” and claimed he had cultivated the relationship over more than two years in the national interest.
But he was found guilty of a charge under the Official Secrets Act and another under the Terrorism Act at the end of last year at Woolwich Crown Court, having admitted escaping from lawful custody part-way through his trial.
Daniel Khalife jailed for spying and prison escape. Pic: Met Police
Sentencing Khalife, Mrs Justice Cheema-Grubb told him: “When you joined the Army as a young man, you had the makings of an exemplary soldier. However, through the repeated violation of your oath of service, you showed yourself to be, instead, a dangerous fool.”
She added: “You embarked on the course of conduct I have described because of a selfish desire to show off, to achieve by unregulated means what you were told will be difficult for you to achieve by conventional promotion.
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Watch Iran spy Daniel Khalife get jail sentence
“The mere fact that you started on this dangerous and fantastical plan demonstrates your immaturity and lack of wisdom, that you thought it was appropriate to insert yourself – an unauthorised, unqualified and uninformed junior soldier – into communication with an enemy state is perhaps the clearest indication of the degree of folly in your failure to understand at the most obvious level the risk you posed.”
She said he would have been a blackmail risk for his whole career had he not been caught.
The judge said Khalife contacted MI5 and MI6 in his attempts to become a double agent but was ignored. She added: “The greater mischief in your offending is that, having failed to engage any response from the intelligence services of the United Kingdom, you continued betraying your country and exposed others to the possibility of harm.”
There was no reaction from Khalife, who looked down as the judge read out his sentence.
Khalife was caught after three days on the run. Pic: Met Police
The court heard Khalife, from Kingston, in southwest London, joined the Army aged 16, before contacting an Iranian middle-man through Facebook.
Giving evidence, he said he wanted to prove himself after a senior officer told him he would not be able to work in intelligence because his mother was born in Iran.
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”.
Khalife joined Army aged 16
He told his handlers he would stay in the military for 25-plus years for them and twice travelled from his barracks, in Staffordshire, to the Iranian embassy in South Kensington, in London.
The court heard he flew to Istanbul, where he stayed in the Hilton hotel between 4 and 10 August 2020, and “delivered a package” for Iranian agents.
The contact continued while he was deployed to Fort Hood, Texas, where he received training in Falcon, a military communications system and even after he was arrested and released on bail.
Khalife told the jury he was an English “patriot” and “not a terrorist or a traitor,” claiming he “thought he could be James Bond” but had only passed on fake or useless information.
But prosecutors said he “exposed military personnel to serious harm” when he shared sensitive information including a handwritten list of serving soldiers, including some in the SAS and SBS special services.
Khalife’s spying activities will not go down in the “annals of history,” his barrister told the court at his sentencing.
Gul Nawaz Hussain KC reminded the judge how they described his actions as more Scooby Doo than James Bond, adding: “What Daniel Khalife clearly chose to do was not born of malice, was not born of greed, religious fervour or ideological conviction.
“His intentions were neither sinister nor cynical.”
Mr Hussain told the court some of the documents Khalife had forged to pass to the Iranians were “laughably fake”.
Khalife escaped under a food delivery lorry. Pic: Met Police
Khalife used a makeshift sling. Pic: Met Police
Police said he had been planning his “pretty audacious” escape for “quite some time” and the court heard he wrote in his prison diary of a “failed” attempt on 21 August last year.
Khalife, who got a job in the prison kitchen, said he used the trousers inmates wore as uniform, to make a rope, which he attached 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 was not 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.
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.
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.
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Khalife caught on CCTV
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.
The court heard that while he was on the run, Khalife was in contact with his Iranian handlers, who used the code name “David Smith”, and he sent the message: “I wait.”
When he was arrested on the footpath of the Grand Union Canal on 9 September Khalife told police: “My body aches. I f****d myself up under the lorry” and “I don’t know how immigrants do it”.
He told jurors his time on the run showed “what a foolish idea it was to have someone of my skillset in prison”.
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.
Read more:
Who is Yang Tenbo?
Virginia Giuffre says she has days to live
Emails between Andrew and Epstein revealed
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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