A former British soldier found guilty of spying for Iran after a audacon Three -day escape From a London prison was sentenced on Monday to more than 14 years behind bars for betraying his country.
Daniel Khalife23 years, was sentenced in November for having violated the official secrets on secrets and the law on terrorism for having provided limited and classified documents to Iran.
“As a young man, you had the creation of an exemplary soldier, however, through the repeated violations of your service oath, you revealed yourself rather a dangerous fool,” said judge Bobbie Cheema-Grubb.
“You are a seeker and you appreciated the notoriety that you attracted after your prison escape,” added the judge, According to the BBC.
Anna Gordon / Reuters
Woolwich Crown Court’s jurors had rejected his testimony that he was trying to work for the United Kingdom as a double agent.
Khalife’s espionage affair had not received a lot of attention until it got out of Wandsworth prison on the belly of a food delivery truck. He was on the run for three days before the police stopped him by bicycle by a channel in London.
Khalife pleaded guilty to the escape during his trial, but continued to contest the charges of spying.
Khalife’s lawyer, who argued that his actions looked more like a “scooby doo” plot than a James Bond thriller, said that his client had only made imprecise information, especially documents ” ridiculously false “which did not cause any real damage.
“There is no way that what Mr. Khalife ended up being a lesson for budding spies,” said lawyer Gul Nawaz Hussain. “His intentions were neither sinister nor cynical.”
The court also heard a number of attenuating factors, including a psychological relationship of 2023 to diagnose it with an antisocial personality disorder and a narcissistic personality disorder, the BBC reported.
But the prosecutors said that Khalife had actually played a “cynical game” by saying that he wanted to be a spy after having delivered a large amount of equipment limited and classified in the Iranian intelligence service, including the names of the officers of the forces Special.
Khalife testified that he had been in contact with people from the Iranian government, but that everything was part of a ploy to finally work as a double agent for Great Britain, a program he developed by watching the program television “Homeland”.
The BBC reported that it had been authorized to perpetrate a Canular bomb at his army barracks at the RAF staff In 2023, after three wired cannisrs were left at the base where he lived and worked.
The authorities said he had presented a real risk to national security due to the threat that Iran poses. Police noted that the United Kingdom had disrupted 20 plots by Iran, including assassination plans.
British security services were not aware of the Caliph contacts with the Iranians until he contacted the MI6, the United Kingdom’s foreign intelligence service, to offer a double agent.
He contacted the MI6 anonymously, saying that he had gained the confidence of his Iranian managers and that they had rewarded it by leaving $ 2,000 in cash (1,578 pounds) in a poop bag in a park of North of London.
Khalife joined the army at 16 and was assigned to the Royal Corps of Signals, a communication unit which is deployed with battlefield troops, as well as special forces and intelligence teams.
He was told that he could not join the intelligence service because his mother is from Iran.
At 17, he contacted a man linked to Iranian information and began to transmit information, prosecutors said. He received the secret NATO security authorization when he participated in a joint exercise in Fort Cavazos in Texas in early 2021.
The judge noted that his security violations on American soil could have caused diplomatic damage.
The escape of the prison of the Victorian era has drawn attention to the greater failures in the aging and overcrowded correctional system of the country. An investigation is currently underway on how Khalife has been able to escape and if others have helped.
An audit found 81 security failures in prison, the BBC reported. This has also caused improvements to the video surveillance cameras that had not operated for more than a year, said the prison independent supervisory board.
Two men were arrested for caregiver after escaping.