Court says Khalife, who previously escaped from jail, passed information to ‘enemy state’ for more than two years.
A former British soldier who sparked a manhunt after escaping from prison before his trial has been sentenced by a court in the United Kingdom to 14 years for spying for Iran.
A judge at Woolwich Crown Court in southeast London said on Monday that Daniel Khalife, 23, had embarked on a “dangerous and fantastical plan” that involved passing sensitive information to Iranian intelligence for cash.
Khalife was convicted in November of espionage and “terrorism” charges as well as for escaping prison in 2023.
The ex-soldier, whose mother is Iranian, gathered information over a two-and-a-half-year period while posted in the UK and United States, including the names of elite special forces personnel, before being arrested and charged in 2023.
“The mere fact that you started on this dangerous and fantastical plan demonstrates your immaturity and lack of wisdom,” said Justice Bobbie Cheema-Grubb.
Prosecutors accused Khalife of playing a “cynical game”, getting in contact with a man linked to Iranian intelligence after joining the British army.
Khalife had said he was a patriot and had contacted both the UK’s MI6 and MI5 intelligence services about his contacts, saying he wanted to be a “double agent”. He had said he and his family hated the Iranian government.
He was discharged from the armed forces after he was charged.
Khalife also admitted escaping from London’s Wandsworth Prison in September 2023 while awaiting trial for the other charges. He tied himself to the bottom of a delivery van, sparking a nationwide manhunt before he was caught days later.
The former soldier, who grew up in southwest London, joined the army in 2018 aged 16.
Cheema-Grubb said she had “no doubt” that Khalife used his Iranian heritage to gain the trust of his contacts.
During the trial, jurors were shown a photograph from Khalife’s phone of a handwritten list he had made of 15 soldiers, including their service number, rank, initials, surname and unit.
The details of special forces personnel was “undoubtedly valuable, and giving them to an enemy state would have very substantially increased the risk to them and to their operational effectiveness”, the judge said.
Khalife allegedly remained in contact with Iranian handlers while posted to Fort Hood, Texas in the US between February and April 2021, when he was given the second-highest level of NATO security clearance, one below “cosmic top secret”.
He also travelled to Turkiye to meet his Iranian handlers, and twice collected money in exchange for information, according to authorities.
Khalife argued the documents he passed to his Iranian handler were useless, being either publicly available, or ones he created himself.
His lawyer Gul Nawaz Hussain, who drew a contrast between “007 and Scooby Doo” in terms of Khalife’s ability and actions, said that he was not driven by malice, greed, religious fervour or ideological conviction.
“Had he been a genuine spy, he would not have behaved as he did,” Hussain said.