A suspected terrorist hung onto the bottom of a delivery truck as it drove out the gates of one of the UK’s largest prisons, sparking an appeal for information and a manhunt by London’s Metropolitan Police.
Daniel Abed Khalife, a British Army soldier who is accused of a terror plot — allegedly harvesting information from a Ministry of Defence database and staging a bomb hoax — is believed to have escaped from His Majesty’s Prison Wandsworth on Wednesday. The 21-year-old is said to have escaped from the London B-category prison by using his role in the facility’s kitchens to sneak under a visiting truck, holding onto the underside as it drove out of the compound.
THe Metropolitan Police said they were “urgently appealing” for information about Khalife, saying he “should not be approached” by members of the public, and that he had links to the London Kingston area. The force’s head of counterterrorism talked down the risk posed by Khalife being at large, though, saying Wednesday: “I also want to reassure the public that we have no information which indicates, nor any reason to believe that Khalife poses a threat to the wider public”.
Khalife was last seen wearing a white t-shirt, red and white chequered trousers and brown boots.
Per the Police’s statement, Khalife was being held pending trial at Wandsworth on for “terrorism and Official Secrets Act offences”. A July 2023 report about his case states Khalife, who has denied the charges against him, had acted against the “safety and interests of the State” in 2021 by using his access to an Army personnel file database to collect information which would be “useful to a person committing or preparing an act of terrorism”.
He was also accused of leaving “three canisters with wires” at his barracks at MOD Stafford which was allegedly a bomb hoax. Khalife was told by a magistrate in February that: “These matters are very serious… If you are convicted, you are going to face a prison sentence in years not months.”
His trial was due to be on November 13th.