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 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 saw Khalife 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.
Was it an opportunistic escape or had it been planned?
The degree to which Khalife plotted his escape is also being examined. The only real evidence to emerge so far are the bindings he used to attach himself to the delivery van, which were found after his escape. Potential collusion was also being examined by counter-terrorism police, but is not said to be a significant line of inquiry.
Were overcrowding or staff shortages to blame?
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.
