A former soldier whose prison escape led to a prolonged manhunt in 2023 has been convicted of spying for Iran but cleared of carrying out a bomb hoax.
Daniel Khalife was found guilty of two counts relating to his espionage on Thursday. Wearing a blue shirt and pale trousers in court, he calmly put his glasses back on as the verdicts were read out and did not show any emotion.
The 23-year-old had admitted partway through his trial to the escape from HMP Wandsworth, in south-west London. Khalife had strapped himself to the underside of a food delivery van while being held on remand over the spying charges.
Prosecutors accused Khalife of playing “a cynical game” in claiming he wanted a career working as a double agent to help British security services. In fact, he gathered “a very large body of restricted and classified material”, they said.
Khalife covertly gathered the names of serving soldiers, including those in special forces. Woolwich crown court was told that he took a photo of a handwritten list of 15 service personnel who included members of the SAS and Special Boat Service, having been sent an internal spreadsheet of promotions in June 2021.
He denied sending the list to the Iranians and claimed he mostly sent useless or made-up documents. In his defence, Khalife’s barrister, Gul Nawaz Hussain KC, said his double-agent plot had been amateurish.
Khalife’s trial heard that he could have endangered the life of Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe by sending a fake intelligence document to Iran that said the British government was not willing to negotiate over her release. Jurors were told he sent a document to Iranian agents titled “Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe intelligence options”, which he created in 2021.
Prosecutors said he acted recklessly in sending the document and could have caused “consequences” for Zaghari-Ratcliffe, who was freed only after ministers agreed to settle a £400m debt dating back to the 1970s.
The former soldier’s bogus document read: “There will be no advances in the area of returning Nazanin to the UK without further procurement of the debt owed to the Islamic Republic. The UK will not be seen to pay ransoms to hostile nations … terrorists have long used kidnap for ransom.”
In a transcript of a police interview read to the jury, Khalife said he produced “fake documents” to help convince the Iranians to trust him.
When police arrested him and searched his room at MoD Stafford in January 2022, they found a number of “completely fake” documents in digital and paper form purporting to be from MPs, senior military officials and the security services. Prosecutors say Khalife made sure there was no record of what documents were sent.
After his conviction, the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) said Khalife’s actions could have put military personnel’s lives at risk and prejudiced national security. “As a serving soldier of the British army, Daniel Khalife was employed and entrusted to uphold and protect the national security of this country. But, for purposes of his own, Daniel Khalife used his employment to undermine national security,” said Bethan David, the head of counter-terrorism at the CPS.
“He surreptitiously sought out and obtained copies of secret and sensitive information which he knew were protected and passed these on to individuals he believed to be acting on behalf of the Iranian state. The sharing of the information could have exposed military personnel to serious harm, or a risk to life, and prejudiced the safety and security of the United Kingdom.”
Commander Dominic Murphy, the head of the Met police’s counter-terrorism unit, said: “I hope this serves as a warning that the illegal sharing of information in this way will be treated extremely seriously by security services and police and we will use the full force of the law against those who put the UK’s security at risk.”
While on the run, Khalife made one last attempt to contact the Iranians before he was found, sending a Telegram message that said: “I wait.”
Concern that he would try to escape again during his trial was so high that when he gave evidence he was brought to and from the witness box in handcuffs.
Khalife has said he undertook his escape in the hope that after his recapture he would be kept in a high-security unit (HSU) at a different prison, away from “sex offenders” and “terrorists”.
Mrs Justice Cheema-Grubb told jurors she had asked Khalife if he wanted the prison escape charge to be put to him again. He replied: “I’m guilty.”
The court heard he planned a fake escape attempt for 21 August in the hope he would be moved to the HSU, but he decided that a genuine escape was his only option after the incident was not reported to senior prison staff.
Khalife was convicted of charges under the Official Secrets Act and Terrorism Act.
