Cynical' ex-soldier Khalife convicted of spying for Iran

Former soldier Daniel Khalife has been found guilty of spying for Iran but cleared of carrying out a bomb hoax.

- TARA COBHAM

The 23-year-old, who previously admitted to escaping from prison, was accused of collecting secret information and passing it to agents of the Middle Eastern country while serving in the Royal Corps of Signals.

Prosecutors told the ex-soldier’s trial he had played “a cynical game”, claiming he wanted a career as a double agent to help the British intelligence services, when in fact he had gathered “a very large body of restricted and classified material” – while police described him as the “ultimate Walter Mitty character” but one that was “having an extremely significant impact in the real world”.

Yesterday, after 23 hours of deliberation, a jury at Woolwich Crown Court convicted Khalife of breaching the Official Secrets Act and the Terrorism Act but acquitted him on the charge of perpetrating a bomb hoax. The defendant, wearing a blue shirt and pale trousers, calmly replaced his glasses as the verdicts were read out, and did not show any emotion.

He had pleaded guilty partway through his trial to escaping from HMP Wandsworth in southwest London in September 2023 by clinging to the underside of a food delivery truck using a sling made from kitchen trousers.

Khalife’s trial heard he had 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, having joined in 2018 two weeks before his 17th birthday.