This blog is closed. Here’s a summary of today’s main developments:
Daniel Khalife was arrested by plain-clothes police at 10.41am this morning while cycling a bike along a towpath near Northolt, north-west London.
Police paid tribute to the public and the media for the “substantial role” they played in Khalife’s capture and said they will now pivot their resources to investigating his escape in order to find anyone who assisted him.
Commander Dominic Murphy, the Metropolitan police’s counter-terrorism chief, told reporters: “If we identify anybody who helped and supported him we will be looking for them and ensuring that they also face justice.”
Labour is demanding answers from the government about “how on earth” a prisoner charged with terror and national security offences could have escaped from prison.
Thanks for following along with me, Donna Ferguson.
Updated
On social media, posters poked fun at the news that, despite all his military training, Khalife was captured so quickly. Others found it amusing that he was arrested while taking a sunny bike ride along the Thames after his dramatic escape from jail.
One person compared his attempt to evade police to Mr Blobby walking into a room:
'He's trained in espionage and survival, the police will never get him.'
— Stephen Graham 🇺🇦 (@StephenCVGraham) September 9, 2023
Daniel Khalife in Chiswick: pic.twitter.com/AJh8LlhRLs
Another suggested Khalife’s attempt to hide from police was comparable to a very poor attempt to hide behind a tree:
“he’s military trained in espionage and survival, he won’t even be in the country by now”
— three steaks pam (@alexandrakuri) September 9, 2023
daniel khalife: pic.twitter.com/xokN3WF6Cs
One poster poked fun at the idea of Khalife attempting to evade capture in a leafy area of west London:
Apparently locals became suspicious when they saw a man, now identified as Daniel Khalife, walking through Chiswick House gardens without a Labradoodle. pic.twitter.com/IsfTiNYdM2
— Alastair Hilton (@London_W4) September 9, 2023
Another suggested that escaping from Wandsworth and getting as far as Chiswick was less than impressive:
Daniel khalife only making it to Chiswick in 4 days, is like telling your parents you're running away and then sitting in the garden pic.twitter.com/Uxjd0nBedx
— Jamie Simmonds (@Simmo97x) September 9, 2023
Broadcaster Anneka Rice tweeted that she now feels better about her attempt to evade capture on the TV show Celebrity Hunted:
Blimey … if ex-soldier Khalife only lasted 4 days, I feel my time on Celebrity Hunted wasn’t so shit. At least I got a suntan and a boat trip with Dire Straits. Hanging around in Chiswick is disappointing with all that military training. ..
— Anneka Rice (@AnnekaRice) September 9, 2023
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Commander Dominic Murphy has also told PA news that the cooperation of the public had been “so significant” in the hunt to find Khalife.
He added: “We wouldn’t have been able to find anything without the public’s help and support. It really helped focus our efforts.
“Clearly, this has also been an intelligence-led investigation, but the media and the public have played a very, very substantial role and that cooperation has been so significant in finding Daniel and making sure that he’s back in custody today.”
A man who was walking along the Grand Union Canal in south-west London has said he witnessed the moments after Daniel Khalife was pulled off a bike by a plainclothes police officer.
The man, who did not want to be named, told the PA news agency: “I look back and it seemed like two guys having an argument. I didn’t know at the time what was happening.
“I read up on it later on. It didn’t seem like it was the guy because they said Chiswick. I walked away. It didn’t even click. It seemed a bit random. They must have had people on every approach to the canal side knowing that he was cycling.”
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Commander Dominic Murphy has told reporters that the Ministry of Justice and Prison Service are exerting “huge amounts of effort” to understand how Daniel Khalife escaped.
He told the PA news agency:
I know huge amounts of efforts are taking place within the Ministry of Justice and the Prison Service now to understand how Daniel escaped.
That will form part of our investigation but my interest... has always been in trying to find Daniel and put him back into custody.
We now pivot our resources into the investigation to understand how he escaped and that’s where our focus will be.
“In terms of the prison, it’s really a matter for the Prison Service and the Ministry of Justice.”
Asked for further detail on Daniel Khalife’s arrest, Murphy told the agency:
The officer was responding as part of our search strategy following the call from the members of public.
And of course, we work really closely with intelligence partners here in counter terrorism.
The officer was in that area as a result of being tasked to search for Daniel, saw him on a pedal cycle, was able to pull him off that pushbike, and arrest him at that moment in time.
After his arrest, Daniel was fully cooperative.”
Commander Dominic Murphy, the Metropolitan Police’s counter-terrorism chief, has given an interview to Sky News warning that police resources are now being redirected from Daniel Khalife’s manhunt towards an investigation into his escape.
He told the broadcaster:
We will pivot all of our resource from the manhunt for Daniel Khalife into now ensuring that we conduct a full investigation into how he escaped and any further criminal charges and anyone that might have helped him … If you were supporting or assisting Daniel – before, during or after his escape – you will still form part of our investigation, and we will find you.
We need to now focus on that part of our work, now that he’s in custody.
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Here’s another view of the canal towpath in west London where terror suspect Daniel Abed Khalife was arrested.
He was pulled off a bike by plainclothes police.
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This is the canal towpath in Northolt, west London, where terror suspect Daniel Khalife was arrested and is in now police custody.
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Home Secretary Suella Braverman has praised the work of police and intelligence workers in tracking down Daniel Khalife.
Officers were seen checking people’s gardens, stopping cars, inspecting car boots and asking residents for their IDs throughout the morning.
Writing on social media, she said:
Terrorism suspect Daniel Khalife has been tracked down & brought back into custody thanks to the determined work of our police & intelligence partners.
I want to thank the Metropolitan police, agencies & Border Force for their work on this massive operation.”
Here’s a map showing the route of Daniel Khalife’s escape and where he was arrested.
Updated
Labour is demanding answers from the government now that Khalife has been arrested.
Shadow home secretary Yvette Cooper said: “We need answers about how on earth a prisoner charged with terror and national security offences could have escaped in this way.”
Commander Murphy said he recognises the impact the search for Daniel Khalife had on people who have been “inconvenienced” at the borders of the UK.
He told reporters:
Loads of people have contacted us from the public, we’ve had tremendous support from around the country in borders.
I fully recognise the impact this has had both on those people in London where we have been focusing a lot of our effort, but also at the borders where the public have been inconvenienced and our borders colleagues and police officers who have had to work very, very hard at the borders to manage that demand.
These are not decisions we take really lightly and it was really important to us, and for the investigations, and clearly for the country – this man was charged with breaches of the Official Secrets Act – a very significant case and as a result that was a necessary part of our strategy to find him.
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Commander Murphy told reporters the Met received “well over 100 calls” from members of the public, with the number increasing “substantially” on Friday evening and in the early hours of Saturday.
He described the investigation as “extremely complicated”, with a lot of police activity being led by intelligence.
Detailing where Khalife had been spotted, Murphy said the force was informed of two sightings in the Chiswick area, causing them to redeploy resources into the area.
The last confirmed sighting of the suspect was in the Church Street and Chiswick Mall area, he added.
Commander Dominic Murphy told reporters the 21-year-old former soldier, who escaped HMP Wandsworth four days ago, was arrested on suspicion of being unlawfully at large and being an escaped prisoner.
Speaking about the investigation, Mr Murphy told reporters:
It’s been about 75 hours since he went missing from the prison to the point of his arrest. That’s pretty quick given the challenge of trying to find this individual.
He was arrested yesterday for being unlawfully at large and for being an escaped prisoner.
In terms of the investigation, it really gathered momentum yesterday afternoon, with a number of calls from the public, but really took a different course last night, when we did an intelligence-led search in the Richmond area in the early hours of this morning.
Whilst we didn’t find him at that search, while we were at that search, we had a number of calls from the public over the next hour or two, giving us various sightings of him.”
Addressing the arrest, Mr Murphy said after he was pulled off the push bike, Khalife was “fully cooperative and handcuffed and arrested”.
He said:
At 10.41am he was arrested in Rowdell Road in UB5 in London on the canal towpath.
He was actually arrested by a plain clothes officer… and he was riding a pedal cycle, so a pushbike, at the time, was pulled off that pushbike by that officer and arrested at that location.
Upon being detained by the officer he was fully co-operative and handcuffed and arrested.”
Anyone who helped Khalife will face justice - police
Commander Dominic Murphy said police will ensure that anyone who helped or supported Daniel Khalife in his escape faces justice.
He told reporters:
It is important to say now though, now he is in custody, and he is in custody in a west London police station, this is still an ongoing investigation so he still has to stand trial for the original offences for which he was on remand and clearly we now need to go and complete the rest of our investigation into his escape.
If we identify anybody who helped and supported him we will be looking for them and ensuring that they also face justice.
Khalife pulled off his bike on canal towpath
Police have issued a new statement on Daniel Khalife’s capture:
Commander Dominic Murphy, the Metropolitan Police’s counter-terrorism chief, said Daniel Khalife was pulled off a bike by the officer that arrested him.
At 10.41am he was arrested in Rowdell Road in UB5 in London on the canal towpath.
He was actually arrested by a plain clothes officer... and he was riding a pedal cycle so a pushbike at the time, was pulled off that pushbike by that officer and arrested at that location.
Upon being detained by the officer he was fully co-operative and handcuffed and arrested.
You can read our full report on Daniel Khalife’s capture here:
Updated
A brief history of Britain’s most daring prison breaks
It is nearly 60 years since, as the Guardian reported at the time: “The 30-year prison sentence which Ronald Arthur Biggs, one of the Great Train Robbers, began 15 months ago was abruptly placed in suspense yesterday afternoon when he was allowed out to exercise in the yard of Wandsworth prison, London. With three other prisoners he disappeared over the 20ft-high wall while his guards, obstructed by men still on exercise, watched helplessly.”
The reporter Tony Geraghty added that, like the train robbery itself, “this operation was characterised by panache and flamboyance”.
While reports this week are less likely to suggest that “panache and flamboyance” were involved in the flight of Daniel Khalife from the same institution, it will certainly go down as a remarkable prison escape.
Continue reading here:
Timeline: how Daniel Khalife became Britain’s most wanted man
6 September 2023
7.32am
Khalife goes missing from HMP Wandsworth and is thought to have strapped himself to the underside of a Bidfood delivery vehicle. He was working in the kitchens at the prison in south-west London, and is believed to have escaped still wearing the uniform of white T-shirt and red and white gingham trousers.
7.50am
Prison staff declare Khalife missing.
8.15am
The Metropolitan police are called by prison staff at HMP Wandsworth and told that Khalife has gone missing.
8.37am
The Bidfood lorry that Khalife escaped in is stopped in upper Richmond Road near the junction with Carlton Drive in Putney. Footage later showed that Khalife had walked away from the lorry at the junction with Wandsworth roundabout, a mile from the prison.
3.30pm
Scotland Yard announces to the public that it is urgently looking for Khalife and that he had escaped from prison that morning.
7 September
The search for Khalife enters its second day. The justice secretary, Alex Chalk, confirms that there will be an independent investigation. He also says urgent reviews will be launched into the categorisation and placement of all HMP Wandsworth prisons. A man is stopped by police at Banbury train station in Oxfordshire, believed to be Khalife, but it is not him. Junctions of the M20 are shut down as part of the search. The number of port staff at Dover searching and checking vehicles is doubled.
8 September
Detectives close off access to the 2,500-acre Richmond Park to search for Khalife. The park is just over four miles from HMP Wandsworth. Specialist teams use thermal scanners as part of the hunt. He is thought to know the area after growing up in Kingston, south-west London. The Metropolitan police commissioner, Sir Mark Rowley, says the force is looking into whether the escape was an inside job. There is a sighting of Khalife in Wandsworth town centre, and the force offers a £20,000 reward for information. Meanwhile a close family member tells the Times that Khalife should give himself up.
9 September
8.50am
Police begin focusing their search around the Chiswick area, less than five miles from HMP Wandsworth, in west London across the River Thames. A spokesperson says detectives believe that Khalife has changed out of his uniform and is now wearing dark clothes. They say members of the public have reported sightings of him.
11am
The Metropolitan police catch Khalife in Chiswick and take him in to police custody.
What we know so far
If you’re just joining us, here are the main developments:
Daniel Khalife, the former soldier who escaped Wandsworth prison on Wednesday, has been caught.
Khalife was apprehended just before 11am in Chiswick, west London.
The justice secretary, Alex Chalk, said the investigation into Khalife’s absconsion would leave “no stone unturned”
Labour’s Yvette Cooper said the public “need answers about how on earth a prisoner charged with terror & national security offences could have escaped”.
Updated
Were staff shortages to blame for Khalife's escape?
Like much of the prison estate, there is no question that Wandsworth is a troubled institution.
Independent inspections have also made the point that conditions improved when prisoner numbers were reduced.
However, with the system almost at capacity, Khalife is likely to be used as a case study for a system at breaking point.
Ministers have insisted that the relevant posts were staffed at the time of the escape.
Key questions after Khalife's recapture
The recapture of Daniel Khalife will come as a huge relief to Alex Chalk, the justice secretary. However, Khalife’s escape will focus attention on the crisis-ridden prison system. These are some of the biggest questions that remain about the case:
Were there delays in beginning the search?
While the exact timeline around Khalife’s escape remains unclear, there have been conflicting reports over the gap between his disappearance from the prison and the start of the police search. This issue is among those being examined by an immediate review of the circumstances around the escape. Police have suggested Khalife escaped under a delivery van at 7.32am and that they were notified 43 minutes later. The van was located at 8.37am, but Khalife was no longer under it.
Should Khalife have been in Wandsworth in the first place?
Quite apart from the circumstances surrounding the escape, questions are being asked about why Khalife was being held at Wandsworth at all. Serious terrorist suspects are normally held at the high-security prison, Belmarsh. The decision that resulted in Khalife being held in Wandsworth, which is a category B security prison, is of particular interest to Chalk, who has asked for an urgent review into the process that led to Khalife being put in a lower security facility.
How did he slip out of the prison kitchen and evade checks?
We know that Khalife made his escape by leaving his post in the prison kitchen and attaching himself under a delivery van. This has led to questions over why he was given such a privileged role and why this simple method of escape proved successful. He appears to have dodged the guards and attached himself to the underside of the delivery van – and evaded checks on the van itself as it departed.
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Chiswick resident Paul Wade said he opened his curtains to find five police officers outside his home earlier today.
The 79-year-old told the PA news agency:
They were checking everybody’s gardens. Our neighbour told us there were sniffer dogs.
As we understand it, they just clambered over the walls and inspected, they didn’t wake everybody up. They just checked. They had helicopters above.
How did Khalife escape?
It was hardly the most sophisticated escape, and it should have been easy enough to prevent. At 7.32am on Wednesday a food delivery van turned right out of Wandsworth prison’s Victorian gates, concluding what should have been an uneventful run.
Except this time, 21-year-old former soldier and terror and spy suspect Daniel Abed Khalife had managed to strap himself underneath the vehicle, evading the beleaguered jail’s security and becoming only the seventh prisoner to escape from prison in England and Wales in the past five years.
Khalife had secured himself a position working in the prison canteen, considered a plum role for somebody who could be trusted. It was also a place where deliveries would routinely take place, bringing in food to the 1,500-plus inmates and staff at the south London jail first built in 1851.
Police were not called by the prison until 8.15am and the van was not stopped until it had travelled about three miles in the morning rush hour to nearby Upper Richmond Road, by which time Khalife had disappeared.
The Home Office minister Chris Philp congratulated the police for their “rapid and effective” work to apprehend the terror suspect.
On X, formerly known as Twitter, he wrote:
Great work by the Met Police. Well done for a rapid and effective piece of work to catch this fugitive. An example of policing at its best. Congratulations to all Officers involved in this operation
Inquiry into how Khalife escaped 'will leave no stone unturned', says justice secretary
The justice secretary, Alex Chalk, said that he will leave “no stone unturned” in the investigations launched after the escape of Daniel Khalife, who is back in custody.
In a statement, the cabinet minister said:
I would like to thank the police and partners for their comprehensive efforts over recent days. I am also grateful to staff across HMPPS (HM Prison and Probation Service) for their continued focus and professionalism.
With Daniel Khalife now in custody, the legal process must be allowed to take its course. Nothing should be said or done to prejudice any future trial.
The investigations I requested into prison security and categorisation are well in train, and I will leave no stone unturned in getting to the bottom of how this serious breach was possible.
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Labour has demanded answers from the government now that Daniel Khalife has been arrested.
The shadow home secretary, Yvette Cooper, wrote on social media:
Thank you to all the police & intelligence teams involved in the search and arrest of Daniel Khalife - very welcome news he has now been caught.
Now we need answers about how on earth a prisoner charged with terror & national security offences could have escaped in this way.
Updated
Residents in the Chiswick area reported hearing helicopters overhead throughout this morning.
Earlier, Scotland Yard released a statement saying the area of south-west London, just under 5 miles from the prison from which he escaped, was the focus of their search.
Officers said he had changed out of the prison kitchen uniform of a white T-shirt and red and white gingham trousers, into a black baseball cap, black T-shirt and dark-coloured trousers. They added that they believed he had been carrying a small bag or case.
Members of the public had reported sightings of him in the area, the other side of the River Thames from HMP Wandsworth.
Updated
Rishi Sunak has praised efforts by the police and the public in finding Khalife.
Speaking to broadcasters at the G20 summit venue in Delhi, India, the prime minister said:
I’m very pleased with the news and my thanks to the police officers for their fantastic work over the past couple of days, but also to the public who came forward with an enormous number of leads to help the police in their inquiries.
This is obviously very welcome news. Again, my thanks to the police but also to the public for their help.
Daniel Khalife caught in west London
Daniel Khalife, the former soldier who absconded from a prison kitchen by strapping himself to the underside of a delivery van, has been recaptured.
Khalife, 21, was arrested in Chiswick, west London, on Saturday, having gone missing in his cook’s uniform from HMP Wandsworth in London on Wednesday morning.
The Metropolitan police said they had arrested him just before 11am on Saturday. He is being held in police custody.
The force added:
We would like to thank the public and media for their support throughout our investigation to locate Khalife, and we will provide a further update on his arrest in due course.
Metropolitan Police officers have arrested Daniel Khalife who escaped from HMP Wandsworth on 6 Sep
— Metropolitan Police (@metpoliceuk) September 9, 2023
Officers apprehended him just before 11am today in the #Chiswick area, and he is currently in police custody
We thank the public and media for their support with info & appeals
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