Daniel Khalife pleads guilty to escaping from prison
A former soldier accused of spying for Iran has pleaded guilty to escaping from prison under a food catering truck and going on the run for four days while he was awaiting trial.
Daniel Khalife, 23, from Kingston, southwest London, changed his plea to a charge of escaping from lawful custody, halfway through giving evidence at Woolwich Crown Court.
The judge, Mrs Justice Cheema Grubb, told the jury: "In your absence, I have asked Mr Khalife if he wants count four put to him again.
"He has admitted he was in lawful custody and has admitted he has deliberately escaped and therefore there is no lawful defence to that charge."
The charge was put to him again and Khalife, dressed in a white shirt, chinos, a blue knitted waistcoat and white trainers, answered: "I'm guilty."
He faces cross-examination on the spying charges today.
Khalife is accused of spending two years passing secrets to the Iranians while serving with the Royal Corps of Signals but denies the charges, saying he only handed over fabricated documents in an attempt to become a double agent.
His defence lawyer said earlier during the trial that police only began investigating him because he "contacted MI6 and MI5" to offer his services.
After he was charged under the Official Secrets Act, he escaped from prison under a food catering van on 6 September last year, causing a nationwide manhunt.
Prosecutors say he intended to defect to Iran while on the run, when he used a phone he had bought to contact his handlers, but Khalife told the court: "I was not thinking straight. I was not looking for any help to aid the escape, I made contact out of curiosity. I was curious to see what the sentiment was within the [Iranian] state."
He said that he had hatched his plan to escape from prison after he was told in July last year that he was being transferred to Belmarsh maximum security jail, ahead of his trial next door.
Khalife said that he was having "major issues" in HMP Wandsworth where he was in the vulnerable prisoners' unit alongside paedophiles and rapists because terrorist convicts might want to kill him.
He decided "it left only one place", the high security unit, a prison within a prison in Belmarsh.
"I wanted to make a show of an escape to raise my categorisation. I was going to make it seem as though I wanted to escape, essentially get caught in the act," he said.
On 21 August last year, Khalife marked the date in his diary with an asterisk and the word "failed."
He told the court he had covered himself in soot and "acted suspiciously" near the lorry "making it seem as though I was attempting to escape."
One of the kitchen staff spotted him and told him they would put an incident report in but nothing further happened.
"I had no intention to leave this jurisdiction or run away from these charges. I was disappointed in myself for taking the half measure so I took a full measure. I left and I knew at that time I would be categorised as doubly 'cat a high risk'."
Read more from the trial:
'I'm a patriot and I love my country,' Khalife tells court
CCTV shows Khalife 'reading newspaper story about manhunt'
Khalife 'picked up £1,500 from Iranian handlers in dog poo bag'
The former soldier explained how he used a pair of trousers from his kitchen uniform to form makeshift "ropes" and attached carabiner clips that were securing the lockers in the changing rooms to keep out rats.
On 1 September, he attached the sling underneath the Mercedes refrigerated food delivery lorry to test the security.
On the morning of Wednesday 6 September, Khalife was escorted from his cell to the kitchen on Trinity Wing where he was supposed to be helping unload the food truck.
He was last seen on CCTV inside the prison at 7.18am, dressed in a blue T-shirt and black trousers and carrying a white plastic bag, as he made his way to the kitchen area, pushing a steel catering trolley.
Khalife described how he had come out of the kitchen area and climbed under the back of the lorry.
The Bidford Foods catering lorry began leaving Wandsworth Prison in South London at 7.26am, eight minutes after Khalife was last seen.
Khalife made his way from Wandsworth to Richmond and was seen on various CCTV cameras as he remained on the run until 9 September last year.
He was arrested on a canal towpath in Northolt after being pulled off a push bike by a plain-clothes police officer.
Khalife denies committing an act prejudicial to the safety or interests of the state, eliciting information about members of the armed forces and perpetrating a bomb hoax. The trial continues.
