Former British army soldier Daniel Khalife has been jailed for 14 years and 3 months for spying for Iran and escaping from Wandsworth prison.
Khalife collected information and passed it to Tehran, including gathering the names of special forces soldiers.
The 23-year-old became the subject of a nationwide manhunt in September 2023 when he fled prison while awaiting trial by strapping himself to the underside of a food delivery truck. He was arrested in London after a 75-hour search.
On sentencing, Mrs Justice Bobbie Cheema-Grubb said Khalife “had the makings of an exemplary soldier,” when he joined but instead showed himself “to be a dangerous fool”.
Daniel Khalife, wearing a black jumper, showed no reaction as he was led from court following the sentencing.
Justice Bobbie Cheema-Grubb said: “I do not accept that you planned to hand yourself in”.
“You are an attention seeker and you enjoyed the notoriety you attracted following your escape from prison,” she added.
The former soldier, whose actions breached the Official Secrets Act and the Terrorism Act, was found guilty of spying for Iran after a trial at Woolwich Crown Court in November.
Prosecutors said that Khalife had been “entrusted to uphold and protect the national security of this country”, but had instead “used his employment to undermine” it.
Continuing with her sentencing remarks, Mrs Justice Cheema-Grubb said: “What a shame shortly after basic training you spent more than two years in contact with agents of Iran, a country whose interests do not align with UK”.
She added that by the time Khalife had initiated a relationship with Iran, he had been vetted and cleared and thereby had access to a “sea of sensitive material”.
“The duty of confidentiality you owed would have been drilled into you” she said.
She added it was not possible to know the details of all the information Khalife had passed on to his handlers.
“The court must draw inferences but not speculate,” she concluded.
Soon after Khalife joined the Army in September 2018, he reached out to a man linked to Iranian intelligence on Facebook.
He built a relationship with Iranian contacts and by August 2019 – having been in the Army for less than a year – was sent to collect $2,000 (£1,600) in a dog poo bag in Mill Hill Park, north London.
He then contacted MI6 saying he had been paid by Iran after passing on false information and said he wanted to be a “double agent”. He did not reveal he was in the Army – and the intelligence agency ignored him.
However, Khalife’s lawyer claimed twice during the trial that this plot was “hapless” and more “Scooby-Doo” than “007”.
The court also heard a number of mitigating factors, including Khalife’s age and a psychological report from 2023 diagnosing him with Antisocial Personality Disorder and Narcissistic Personality Disorder.
During his time in the Army, including while on a military exercise in the US, Khalife accumulated numerous pictures of secret communications equipment on his iPhone – including computer screens showing IP addresses. It is unclear how many of the photos he actually sent to Iran.
Khalife gathered the names of 15 serving soldiers – including some from the special forces.
Initially he only had surnames and initials, but he found a flaw in the Army’s holiday-booking system that allowed him to look up and photograph soldiers’ first names too. These pictures were later found on his phone.
Prosecutors believe he sent the list of names of soldiers to Iran before deleting the evidence.
However, Khalife denied ever sending it and claimed the information he did pass on was “fake” or “useless”. However, he seemingly sent at least two classified documents – one on drones and another on “Intelligence, Surveillance & Reconnaissance”.
The UK will never know the full scale of what Khalife handed over as most of the messages he exchanged with contacts were sent on the encrypted communication app Telegram.
Speaking after the verdict, Commander Dominic Murphy, the head of the Metropolitan Police’s Counter Terrorism Command, said: “The threat to the UK from states such as Iran is very serious, so for a soldier in the army to be sharing sensitive military material and information with them is extremely reckless and dangerous”.
Three days after his prison escape, Khalife was arrested by plain-clothes officers on 9 September 2023 while riding a stolen bike on a canal tow in north-west London – just 11 miles from Wandsworth.
While on the run, he had made an attempt to contact the Iranians, sending a Telegram message which said simply: “I wait”. He received no response.
It was revealed at the sentencing hearing that Khalife’s escape cost police over £250,000 in overtime, with over 150 officers at one point helping with the manhunt.
Part way through Khalife’s trial last November, he pleaded guilty to escaping from prison.
He was cleared of perpetrating a bomb hoax at his army barracks.
Speaking after his arrest, Khalife told police he had wanted to offer himself to UK security agencies, having emailed MI6 as far back as 2019.
Khalife told the jury that he escaped because he was being held on the vulnerable prisoners unit where most inmates are sex offenders, and because he had been warned that “terrorists” in Wandsworth Prison would try to attack him.
He said he believed that if he escaped he would be put in the high security unit at Belmarsh Prison.
After the escape, an audit found 81 security failings at the prison. It also resulted in “long overdue” upgrades being made to CCTV cameras which had not worked for more than a year, the prison’s Independent Monitoring Board said.
It emerged that on the day of Khalife’s escape, nearly 40% of prison officers did not turn up for their shift at Wandsworth prison. However, the Ministry of Justice insisted the prison had been adequately staffed.
