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Former soldier Daniel Khalife has been found guilty of spying for Iran, but cleared of carrying out a bomb hoax.
The 23-year-old, who previously admitted to escaping from prison, was accused of collecting secret information and passing it to agents of the Middle Eastern country while serving in the Royal Corps of Signals.
The defendant’s trial heard he could have endangered the life of Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe – the British-Iranian mother who was detained in Iran in 2016 and only returned to the UK six years later – by sending a fake intelligence document to Iranian agents, which said the British Government was not willing to negotiate over her release.
Claiming he was a “patriot” who was “against” Iran and wanted to work as a double agent, Khalife had denied charges contrary to the Official Secrets Act and Terrorism Act as well as perpetrating a bomb hoax.
A jury at the Old Bailey convicted Khalife on Thursday of breaching the Official Secrets Act and Terrorism Act, after 23 hours of deliberation, but he was acquitted of perpetrating a bomb hoax.
Khalife, wearing a blue shirt and pale trousers, calmly replaced his glasses as the verdicts were read out, and did not show any emotion.
He had pleaded guilty partway through his trial to escaping from HMP Wandsworth in south-west London in September 2023 by clinging to the underside of a food delivery truck using a sling made from kitchen trousers.
He previously told the court he escaped in the hope he would be kept in a high-security unit (HSU) at a different prison, away from “sex offenders” and “terrorists” after his recapture.
While on the run, the escaped prisoner bought clothes from Marks & Spencer and a coffee from McDonald’s, while he stole a hat from a Mountain Warehouse store. He walked along the River Thames and started using a bicycle he found before being caught by police three days later.
The officer who captured Khalife on a canal towpath in west London on 9 September 2023, described the prisoner as “jovial” and told jurors he “congratulated me on catching him”.
In a report published earlier this year, HMP Wandsworth’s Independent Monitoring Board (IMB) said an audit found 81 security failings at the scandal-hit jail in the wake of the escape, while an internal review made 39 recommendations.
The IMB said 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.
The Ministry of Justice (MoJ) is yet to outline their findings or confirm whether any disciplinary action against staff at the prison has been taken.
More follows on this breaking news story…
