Daniel Abed Khalife has been sentenced to 14 years and three months in prison for escaping from jail while awaiting trial on charges of spying for Iran. Khalife joined the army at just 16 and soon after began passing sensitive information to Tehran, including the names of special forces soldiers.
Khalife, now 23, was charged in January 2023 and eight months later absconded from Wandsworth prison ahead of his trial, becoming the subject of a nationwide manhunt. He was eventually arrested in London after a 75-hour search. Following a trial at Woolwich crown court, Khalife was found guilty of spying for Iran, acts that violated the Official Secrets Act and the Terrorism Act.
During Monday's sentencing, Mrs. Justice Cheema-Grubb said Khalife joined the army with "the potential to be a model soldier" but instead demonstrated that he "was a dangerous fool." The judge added: "You are a person who seeks attention and you enjoyed the notoriety that came with your escape from prison." Khalife, wearing a black sweatshirt, showed no reaction as he was led from the court after the sentencing.
During the trial, Khalife admitted to escaping from prison by strapping himself to the bottom of a food delivery truck. In addition, he was found not guilty after being accused of planting a bomb hoax at his barracks at the Royal Air Force base in Stafford in 2023, when three canisters with wires were found at the base. Khalife began cultivating relationships with Tehran shortly after being hired by the British Army as a teenager in September 2018.
He used Facebook to contact a man linked to Iranian intelligence and from there developed relationships with various contacts from Iran. By August 2019, less than a year after joining the army, he was directed to a park in Mill Hill, north London, to collect $2,000 (£1,600) in a dog poo bag. Khalife also traveled to Turkey in August 2020, where he left a package for Iranian intelligence operatives. During the trial, the court heard that Khalife had twice anonymously contacted MI6 to offer his services as a double agent.
Following those calls, police launched an investigation into him in November 2021. He was arrested in January 2022 and charged a year later. Later in 2023, he escaped from Wandsworth prison while awaiting trial, only to be discovered and arrested three days later. Prosecutors said Khalife "was trusted to safeguard and protect the national security of this country," but instead he "used his employment to undermine" it. However, Khalife's lawyers twice claimed during the trial that the plot was "unfortunate" and more like "Scooby Doo" than "007."
In her sentencing remarks, Cheema-Grubb said: "What a waste that not long after basic training you spent over two years communicating with agents of Iran, a country whose interests are not aligned with the UK." She added that Khalife had been vetted and approved for access to "a vast amount of sensitive material" at the time he established his relationship with Iran. "The obligations of confidentiality you undertook should have been etched in your mind," she added. The judge said it was impossible to know the details of all the information Khalife passed to his contacts.
The court also heard mitigating factors, including Khalife's age and a psychological report from 2023 that diagnosed him with antisocial personality disorder and narcissistic personality disorder. During his time in the army, including during a military exercise in the U.S., Khalife amassed a large number of photographs on his iPhone of secret communications equipment, including computer screens showing IP addresses. It is not clear how many photographs he actually sent to Iran.
Khalife collected the names of 15 serving soldiers, including some from special forces units. Initially, he only had surnames and initials, but he discovered a loophole in the army's leave booking system that allowed him to look up and photograph soldiers' names. These photographs were later found on his phone. Prosecutors argued that he had sent the list of soldiers' names to Iran before deleting the evidence. However, Khalife denied ever sending the list and claimed that the information he passed was "fake" or "useless." However, he appeared to have sent at least two classified documents – one about drones and another about "intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance."
The UK will never know the full scale of what Khalife handed over, as most of the information he exchanged with his contacts was sent via the encrypted communications app Telegram. Following the sentencing, Commander Dominic Murphy, head of the Metropolitan Police's Counter Terrorism Command, said: "The threat to the UK from countries such as Iran is very real and so for a serving member of the military to be sharing sensitive military material and information with them is utterly reckless and dangerous."
After his escape from prison, Khalife was arrested by plainclothes police officers while riding a stolen bicycle on a towpath alongside a canal in north-west London – just 11 miles from Wandsworth. While on the run, he had attempted to contact the Iranians, sending a Telegram message that simply read: "I'm waiting." He received no reply. It was revealed at the sentencing hearing that Khalife's escape cost the police more than £250,000 in overtime, with more than 150 officers assisting in the manhunt at one point.
Khalife told police he aspired to work in military intelligence or an elite signals unit. He said he was told by an officer that his background meant he was unlikely to get the highest level of security vetting – known as "developed vetting" – which would allow him to work in sensitive posts. "After this, I decided to start my own intelligence operation to prove that I was capable of doing so," he wrote in an electronic note in 2021. Khalife told the jury that he escaped because he was being held in the vulnerable prisoner's unit, where most of the inmates were sex offenders, and because he was warned that "terrorists" at Wandsworth prison would try to attack him. He said he believed that if he escaped, he would be held in the high-security unit at Belmarsh prison.
Following the escape, an audit found 81 security breaches at the prison. The Independent Monitoring Board at the prison said it also prompted a "long overdue" upgrade of CCTV cameras, which had not been working for more than a year. It was revealed that nearly 40% of prison officers at Wandsworth were not at work on the day Khalife escaped. However, the Ministry of Justice insisted the prison was adequately staffed. Following Monday's sentencing, Security Minister Dan Jarvis said the case showed the government "will use all the tools and powers at our disposal" to disrupt the activities of "individuals who pose a threat to our national security."