A former soldier who was accused of terrorism and escaped from a London prison has been arrested after a four-day manhunt, police said on Saturday.
Daniel Khalife, 21, was detained in Chiswick, west London, just before 11am by officers from the Metropolitan Police’s Counter Terrorism Command. He is now in police custody at a south London police station.
Khalife had escaped from HMP Wandsworth on Wednesday by hiding under a food delivery truck. He was wearing a chef’s uniform and is believed to have held on to straps on the truck to make his getaway.
The escape sparked a nationwide search involving more than 150 counter-terrorism officers and alerted UK ports and airports. There were long queues on the M20 motorway in Kent on Thursday after part of the road was closed for extra security checks at the Port of Dover.
Khalife is a former member of the Royal Signals who was based at Beacon Barracks in Stafford. He was on remand awaiting trial on two charges under the Terrorism Act and the Official Secrets Act.
However, Khalife is accused of planting fake bombs at a military base and gathering information that could be useful to an enemy. He also faced charges of allegedly working for Iran and eliciting personal information from a UK Ministry of Defence database. Khalife had denied all the allegations and his trial was set for November.
The Justice Secretary Alex Chalk had announced an independent inquiry into the escape, which has been called “pre-planned” by London’s police chief. Questions have been raised over whether Khalife should have been held in a more secure facility, considering the nature of the charges against him. HMP Wandsworth is a Category B prison, which holds high security prisoners but is not as secure as a Category A prison, the highest security ranking for prisons in the UK
