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A former soldier whose prison escape sparked a huge 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. 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 on 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 heard that he took a photo of a handwritten list of 15 service personnel who included members of the Special Air Service and Special Boat Service, having been sent an internal spreadsheet of promotions in June 2021.
He denied ever having sent 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.
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.
