Prison break soldier Daniel Khalife jailed for 14 years as judge brands him a 'dangerous fool'
Daniel Khalife was today sentenced to 14 years in prison after he escaped from HMP Wandsworth. Former soldier Daniel Khalife “damaged public confidence” when he escaped from the category B prison in September 2023 by clinging to the underside of a food delivery truck.
“The reaction of the authorities is indicative of the level of public concern,” prosecutor Mark Heywood KC told Woolwich Crown Court. Defending, Gul Nawaz Hussain KC compared Khalife’s actions to “007 and Scooby Doo”.
He told Mrs Justice Cheema-Grubb: “What Daniel Khalife clearly chose to do was not born of malice, was not born of greed, religious fervour or ideological conviction.
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“His intentions were neither sinister nor cynical.” Some of the documents he had forged to pass to the Iranians were “laughably fake”, Mr Hussain told the court.
Khalife committed the crimes between the ages of just 17 and 20, the judge heard, when he had “a sense of unswerving self-belief and gross overestimation of ability”.
“We say it was offending that was born of professional disappointment, a desire to demonstrate genuine utility and that led him to a grossly naive, rose-tinted view of patriotism,” Mr Hussain said.
Daniel Khalife’s spying activities will not go down in the “annals of history”, his barrister told the court. “There’s no way that what Mr Khalife did is going to wind up being a lesson for budding spies,” Gul Nawaz Hussain KC told the judge.
Mr Hussain said Khalife only passed imprecise information, and suggested that no actual damage had been caused. Mr Hussain said Khalife’s gathering of a list of soldiers’ names to pass to Iran had led to positive changes being made to internal Army systems that mean servicemen and women are now better protected.
His escape from prison had also highlighted failings within the prison system that are now being addressed, the court was told. His discharge from the Army has been “a significant loss” because he had planned to spend a large part of his life in the service.
While the 23-year-old knows he will receive a “significant” jail sentence, he plans to use his time in prison to pursue positive avenues, Mr Hussain said. Older inmates have given him advice about how to cope in prison, the judge heard.
Sentencing Daniel Khalife, Mrs Justice Cheema-Grubb said it was a “shame” that the former soldier had spent two years in contact with agents of Iran after joining the army at a commendably young age.
“This began early in your year of training for the Royal Corps of Signals,” the judge told him. Mrs Justice Cheema-Grubb said she had “no doubt” that Khalife had used the fact that his mother is Iranian to gain the trust of his contacts.
The judge began her sentencing remarks by ordering him to pay £10,000 towards the cost of his prosecution, and to forfeit items seized by police including his phones and notebooks.
Mrs Justice Cheema-Grubb told Khalife: “You embarked on the course of conduct I have described because of a selfish desire to show off, to achieve by unregulated means what you were told will be difficult for you to achieve by conventional promotion.
“The mere fact that you started on this dangerous and fantastical plan demonstrates your immaturity and lack of wisdom, that you thought it was appropriate to insert yourself – an unauthorised, unqualified and uninformed junior soldier into communication with an enemy state is perhaps the clearest indication of the degree of folly in your failure to understand at the most obvious level the risk you posed.” She told him he would have been a blackmail risk for his whole career had he not been caught.
He contacted MI6 and MI5 in his attempts to become a double agent, but was ignored. “The greater mischief in your offending is that, having failed to engage any response from the intelligence services of the United Kingdom, you continued betraying your country and exposed others to the possibility of harm,” the judge said.
Daniel Khalife has been jailed for a total of 14 years and three months. "You had the makings of an exemplary soldier, instead you were a dangerous fool," the judge said.