A former who spied for and handed over military secrets before escaping from HMP Wandsworth has been .

was serving in thewhen he “exposed military personnel to serious harm” by collecting sensitive information and . He told his trial he wanted a career as a double agent to help the British intelligence services. But prosecutors proved he was playing a “a cynical game”.

In September 2023,, in south-west London, by clinging to the underside of a food delivery truck and was caught on a canal towpath by a plainclothes detective days later, after a nationwide manhunt was launched.

Jurors at Woolwich found that Khalife had breached the Official Secrets Act and the Terrorism Act. He was cleared of carrying out a bomb hoax and had during his trial. Now, Khalife has been sentenced to 14 years and three months, to be served consecutively, and was remanded into immediate custody. Khalife was also ordered to pay £10,000 towards court costs.

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Speaking to Khalife at Woolwich Crown Court during sentencing, 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. The judge had praised Daniel Khalife's decision to join the army at a young age as an "impressive act of commitment".

She told Khalife: "What a shame, then, that starting in May 2019, shortly after you had completed your basic training... you spent more than two years in contact with agents of Iran, a country whose interests do not align with and at times threaten those of the ." She said that the sentencing of Khalife would act as a method of "deterring others from similar behaviour must be the primary aim of sentence".

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. She added: "You compiled a list of 15 soldiers." He took screenshots of people's full names and these were sergeants with at least 10 years of service each. "The handwritten list was in a folder you admitted sending to the Iranian handlers. Whether or not you did send it, this is a very serious act," the judge added.

"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 says he was an "unauthorised, unqualified and uninformed junior solider" and failed to understand "at the most obvious level" the risk he posed. "You put yourself in danger two because if you had not been caught and dismissed from the army, you would have been a blackmail risk for the entirety of your career," she added.

"However, the greater mischief for your offending is that having 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."

Police described Khalife as the “ultimate Walter Mitty character that was having a significant impact on the real ”. He joined the Army in 2018, two weeks before his 17th birthday, and served with the Royal Corps of Signals. In 2021, Khalife secretly gathered the names of serving soldiers, including those in the special forces.

He took a photo of a handwritten list of 15 of them, having been sent an internal spreadsheet of promotions in June 2021. Prosecutors believed he sent the list to Iran before deleting any evidence.

After his arrest, he told police he had wanted to offer himself to UK security agencies all along, having emailed MI6 as early as 2019. Khalife told jurors he wanted to prove bosses wrong after being told his Iranian heritage could stop him working in military intelligence, and came up with his elaborate double agent plot after watching the TV spy thriller Homeland.

In November 2021, he made an anonymous call to the MI5 public reporting line, confessing to having been in contact with Iran for more than two years. He offered to help the British security services, and said he wanted to return to his normal life.

Khalife claimed that he wanted to flush out Iranian spies working in the UK, but did not manage to gather any evidence against them. “I was thinking I could be James Bond or something, like an idiot,” he told his trial. Defending Khalife during his trial, Gul Nawaz Hussain KC said the double agent plot was “hapless” and “sometimes bordering on the slapstick”, more Scooby-Doo than James Bond or Homeland.

Prosecutors said Khalife prepared a bomb hoax at his Staffordshire barracks in January 2023, but the trial heard how a soldier who arrived in the room pulled wires out of the device to prove it was not real. A bomb disposal unit was called after police attended and looked at the device several days later.

Speaking after he was found guilty, an intelligence expert told the how Khalife may have been forced to divert from his original plan following escape from prison - or may have had no plan at all

Asked if the fugitive had potentially been spooked by how difficult it would be to travel on public transport due to heavy police patrols, and changed his plan, Mr Ingram said: "He might have done. [But] five miles in a built up city, there’s a huge amount of areas he can hide in. And a huge number of areas he can hide in plain sight.

"Compared to say five miles in an open countryside environment. The fact he only moved a few miles from the prison, I wouldn’t read too much into that. He would have wanted to go to ground somewhere until all the furore died down before he made any bigger moves. And clearly that’s what he did or was trying to do."

He went on to say it is likely Khalife was "working on the principle that moving continuously would make it harder for them to find me". However, he added: "He may not have had a proper plan and it got to the point where he was hungry and was just going to try find some food or move elsewhere."