Former soldier Daniel Khalife – who escaped from jail by clinging to the underside of a food truck – is facing years behind bars after being found guilty of spying for Iran.
The 23-year-old played ‘a cynical game’, claiming he wanted a career as a double agent to help the British Intelligence Services, while gathering ‘a very large body of restricted and classified material’ and passing it to his handlers.
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.
Having reached out to a ‘middle-man’ by sending him a Facebook message, Khalife told the Iranians he would stay undercover in the British Army for ‘25-plus years’ for them.
The jury convicted Khalife of breaching the Official Secrets Act and Terrorism Act, after 23 hours of deliberation, but he was acquitted of perpetrating a bomb hoax.
He pleaded guilty part way through his trial to escaping from HMP Wandsworth in September 2023.
Khalife, wearing a blue shirt and pale trousers, calmly replaced his glasses as the verdicts were read out, and did not show any emotion.
Prosecutor Mark Heywood KC said: ‘Over a period of more than two years, Mr Khalife collected and made digital records, but also sometimes in paper form, of a large quantity of information.
‘All the while he was serving soldier in the British army, employed therefore to uphold and to protect the national security of this country.
‘For purposes of his own, in a way prejudicial to the safety or security of this country, he made contact with agents of Iran, a country whose interests to do not align with, and at times threaten, those of the United Kingdom.’
Khalife joined the British Army in 2018 two weeks before his 17th birthday and served with the Royal Corps of Signals.
In 2021, he secretly gathered the names of serving soldiers, including those in the special forces.
He took a photo of a handwritten list of 15 of them, having been sent an internal spreadsheet of promotions in June 2021.
Prosecutors believe he sent the list to Iran before deleting any evidence.
After his arrest, he told police he had wanted to offer himself to UK security agencies all along, having emailed MI6 as early as 2019.
Khalife told jurors he wanted to prove bosses wrong after being told his Iranian heritage could stop him working in military intelligence, and came up with his elaborate double agent plot after watching the TV spy thriller Homeland.
Givingevidence, he claimed he got in touch with Iran because he wanted to become a double agent for the British state.
He told jurors he wanted to become a spy but said he was told he would never get the security clearance needed because his mother was Iranian and his father Lebanese.
In a note written in 2021 Khalife said: ‘All I have ever wanted to do was something in intel. The whole reason I joined was to work in intel. I decided to use my connection to IR [Iran] to my advantage.’
He said in interview when his handlers gave him the £1,500 in a dog poo bag in Barnet, they ‘took a picture of me and drove off’.
‘They wanted proof that I got it,’ he explained.
‘The Iranians wanted me to use the money to go to Beirut. They pretty much controlled Beirut. I made an excuse-that my passport had expired.’
Khalife said he thought he would be detained in Iran like teacher Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe who was held there for six years on spying charges.
‘In the back of my mind I thought they are going to kill me, or I’m going to end up like Nazanin,’ he said.
As an excuse he said he was scared of flying, and didn’t want to use Iran’s Mahan airline.
Khalife went on to say he was shocked when he found out he would not be able to be a spy because of his family heritage.
He said: ‘I thought all options were open to me and my friends and colleagues being in the military.
‘I thought my security check would be everything necessary to do every job in the military. I’d never heard of Developed Vetting. I am a patriot simple as that. I love my country.
‘I joined the military when I was 16-years-old to serve- I wanted to be a real solider, I wanted to go to wars. I’m English, I’ve never even seen it as British, I’m English.
‘I was a 16-year-old boy going to college, everyone else was going to have fun and I purposely put myself in the only way I can be useful to my country.’
Khalife claimed that he was worried the Iranians might suspect he wanted to be a double agent but said they were ‘not the brightest people in the world’.
He claimed he did not do it for money as he wasn’t a ‘materialistic person’.
Explaining why he mounted his own undercover operation against the Iranians, he said: ‘I didn’t really want to give up. I believed I could use my background, that was clear to me.
‘I wanted my country to understand that the process being pursued at that time was foolish.’
Khalife’s barrister, Gul Nawaz Hussain KC, said his double agent plot was ‘hapless’ and ‘sometimes bordering on the slapstick’, more ‘Scooby-Doo’ than James Bond or Homeland.
In September 2023, he escaped from HMP Wandsworth in south-west London by clinging to the underside of a food delivery truck.
He made one last attempt to contact the Iranians before he was found, sending a Telegram message which said simply: ‘I wait.’
Concern he would try a similar stunt during his trial was so high that during his evidence, he was brought to and from the witness box in handcuffs.
Dominic Murphy, head of the Metropolitan Police’s Counter Terrorism Command, said of Khalife’s crimes: ‘Ego is a factor, I’ve got no doubt he’s got an uncanny ability to manipulate others.
‘I think he probably enjoyed the thrill of deception throughout.’
The former soldier will be sentenced at a later date.
Bethan David, Head of the Counter Terrorism Division at the Crown Prosecution Service, said: ‘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.
‘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.
‘The prosecution was able to use mobile phone evidence, notes written by Khalife himself and CCTV footage to piece together and demonstrate that Khalife had gathered and shared much of this classified information, accepted hundreds of pounds for his efforts and even travelled to Turkey as part of his unlawful conduct.
‘It is against the law to collate and share secret and sensitive information for a purpose against the interests of the United Kingdom.
‘Such hostile and illegal activities jeopardise the national security of the United Kingdom, and the CPS will always seek to prosecute anyone that carries out counter state threats.’
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