Ex-soldier accused of spying for Iran 'gathered names of special forces'

Daniel Sandford
Home Affairs Correspondent, BBC News
Reporting from
Woolwich Crown Court
George Wright
BBC News

A former British solider accused of passing secret information to Iran gathered the names of service personnel, including those in special forces, a court has heard.

Daniel Khalife, 23, is separately accused of escaping from Wandsworth Prison last year by strapping himself to the underside of a food delivery truck.

He has gone on trial on charges of collecting sensitive military information for Iran. He denies all the charges.

Mr Khalife offered to work for the Iranians for more than 25 years, Woolwich Crown Court was told on Wednesday.

Mr Khalife took a photo of a handwritten list of 15 soldiers, including some serving in the Special Air Service (SAS) and Special Boat Service (SBS), the prosecution said.

He took details from an internal spreadsheet of promotions in June 2021, sent to a WhatsApp group called Brew Room Boys, and then logged on to an internal HR system to find out the soldiers' first names, jurors heard.

Mark Heywood KC for the prosecution said: "He was clearly researching and gathering and recording that information."

Mr Khalife, who was brought up in Kingston, south-west London by his Iranian-born mother, joined the Army in September 2018, two weeks before his 17th birthday.

In April 2019, he created a contact with the +98 dialling code for Iran, the court has heard.

By August 2020, the prosecution said that Mr Khalife was messaging a man saved in his phone as "David Smith", describing an internal military system which would identify service personnel.

He told the contact: "I won't leave the military until you tell me to", before adding: "25+ years."

The prosecution alleged Mr Khalife travelled to Istanbul in August 2020 with the intention of travelling on to Iran for a meeting, but in the end he just remained in the Hilton Istanbul Bomonti Hotel.

Afterwards in an audio message to ‘David Smith’ he said: “We were supposed meet actually in your country... We went to Turkey and the plan kind of went sour, they didn’t plan it correctly.”

At one point in early 2021, Mr Khalife was posted to Fort Hood in Texas in the United States, and the prosecution said he was still in contact with one of his Iranian handlers while he was there.

It was here where he took a series of screenshots of systems marked "secret", including a password record sheet.

In April that year Mr Khalife was granted the second highest level of Nato security, one below "cosmic top secret".

Mr Heywood said Mr Khalife was not "merely a young soldier" but a "resourceful man".

In his first police interview, conducted in January 2022, Mr Khalife told officers he had an ambition to work in military intelligence or for an elite signals unit.

He said he had been informed by an officer that his ancestry meant he was unlikely to qualify for the high-level security vetting - called "Developed Vetting" - that would allow him to work in sensitive roles.

“After this I decided to start my own intel operation to prove that I was able to do this,” he wrote in an electronic note in 2021.

“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 [Islamic Republic of Iran] to my advantage."

Mr Khalife is alleged to have escaped from HMP Wandsworth in south London while on remand on terror and espionage charges by strapping himself to the underside of a food delivery lorry on 6 September 2023.

Mr Khalife is alleged to have used his trusted role in the prison kitchen to escape.

Police later intercepted the food delivery lorry and the court heard officers found lengths of fabric forming a makeshift sling beneath the vehicle's chassis, secured with metal carabiner clips.

Following his alleged escape, the prosecution said Mr Khalife visited shops, including Mountain Warehouse, M&S and Sainsbury's, and a McDonald's restaurant before he was apprehended.

Mr Khalife was arrested on a canal towpath in west London three days later. He was carrying green Waitrose bag containing £200 in £20 notes, the jury was told.

Police later found a black transit van which the prosecution said Mr Khalife had used when he absconded from the army. In the van was more than £18,000 in cash, some of it counterfeit, according to the prosecution.

The trial, expected to last about six weeks, continues.