Daniel Khalife, who escaped HMP Wandsworth in 2023 sparking a national manhunt, was on Thursday found guilty of spying for Iran after a trial at Woolwich Crown Court
Jailbreak spy Daniel Khalife “doesn’t think about what he is going to do,” according to the former soldier’s mother.
The young man, who joined the British Army as a teenager, completing his basic military training before joining the Royal Corps of Signals, was on Thursday convicted of selling secrets to Iran. Khalife, 23, “exposed military personnel to serious harm” by collecting sensitive information and passing it to agents of the Middle Eastern country. He was paid in cash for this, jurors at Woolwich Crown Court heard during the trial.
Following the conviction, Khalife’s mum, who was born in Iran, has spoken out, insisting the former soldier “doesn’t live in reality”. Farnaz Khalife, 48, added: “He doesn’t think about what he is going to do. He gets things in his brain.”
Khalife’s grandparents had fled the Iranian regime, arriving in the UK in 1992, when Farnaz was 16. His grandmother had been a teacher and his grandfather was an accountant at Tehran University, it is understood. A family member last night stressed Khalife “doesn’t know Iran,” having allegedly only been taken there by his mother twice.
But the trial heard Khalife gathered “a very large body of restricted and classified material” to pass onto Iran. Police described him as the “ultimate Walter Mitty character that was having a significant impact on the real world”. Khalife created and passed on fake documents supposedly from MPs, senior military officials and the security services, but also sent genuine army documents.
Growing up near Kingston-upon-Thames, southwest London, with his twin sister Yasmin, Khalife ordered curious items which were delivered to his home address, including radio equipment worth £250 with which he wanted to listen to pilots at Heathrow Airport, it’s said.
His mother once came home from an 11-shift as a nurse at the Royal Free Hospital in Camden, north London to find holes in the front door and kitchen from a harpoon spear gun. She said she checked with the manufacturing company to ask if the gun was legal – it was.
Farnaz also found a knife in his bag on another occasion. She added: “He said: ‘I need it to protect myself.’ I told him: ‘You can’t carry this.'” She asked his sister to “keep an eye on” him and call her when he got home from school, according to The Times.
Khalife went on to order powder for bodybuilding that he said the SAS used. He had a panic attack, however, and his mother had to dial 111.
“He ordered 50kg weights and used them all the time,” she added. “He watched lots of programmes about the SAS and he always wanted to look like that … like a bodybuilder.” He spent “hours and hours” playing the video game Grand Theft Auto.
In September 2023, he escaped from the category B prison HMP Wandsworth, in southwest London, by clinging to the underside of a food delivery truck.
Five days before his successful escape, he attached a sling to the underside of a lorry made from kitchen trousers and carabiners. As the driver of the Mercedes truck, Balazs Werner, was leaving the prison, two guards checked the vehicle with a “torch and mirror”, and told him someone was missing from the prison.
