The jury was shown CCTV of Daniel Khalife in a branch of McDonald’s in Southall
Daniel Sandford
UK correspondent
Reporting from
Woolwich Crown Court
A jury has seen CCTV footage of a former Army soldier accused of escaping from Wandsworth Prison buying clothes in Marks & Spencer, changing clothes in a McDonald’s toilet and and topping up his phone in Sainsbury’s.
Footage shown at the Woolwich Crown Court trial of Daniel Khalife also showed him in the kitchen area of the prison on 6 September 2023, before a Bidfood truck was seen driving out of the main gate.
The prosecution alleges he was hiding underneath in a makeshift sling near the rear axle.
Mr Khalife, 23, is also accused of collecting sensitive military information for Iran. He denies the charges against him.
Image source, Metropolitan Police
The 23-year-old is accused of escaping Wandsworth Prison
The jury heard on Tuesday that a woman driving behind the van, Skye Vokins, saw him rolling out from under the lorry near Wandsworth roundabout in south London, flick his fringe and walk calmly off.
Later on the day of the alleged escape, Mr Khalife was recorded on CCTV further west in Richmond.
He was seen in Mountain Warehouse, looking at a CCTV camera, putting a blue cap in a Waitrose bag and then leaving, apparently without paying.
The next day CCTV showed him buying two shirts and some jogging bottoms in Marks & Spencer and then topping up his phone in Sainsbury’s in Hammersmith.
On 8 September he was recorded in a newsagent reading articles about his alleged escape in the Daily Mail and Daily Mirror, before buying the former paper.
The jury were told Mr Khalife had bought a second hand phone and made a search for “Can a phone be tracked from IMEI?”. An IMEI number is a unique identifier for a mobile phone handset.
Image source, Metropolitan Police
The court heard he changed his clothes in the McDonald’s toilet
Image source, Metropolitan Police
Mr Khalife was also seen on CCTV buying a newspaper
The prosecution says he also sent messages on Telegram to an account linked to Iranian intelligence, including a message that read “I wait”.
On the morning of Saturday 9 September, CCTV caught him in a McDonald’s in Southall, west London, where he changed clothes in the toilet and bought an expresso.
Not long after that he was arrested on a canal towpath in nearby Northolt.
The day after he was recaptured, Mr Khalife told the interviewing officer that in the army “you’re literally trained for escape and evasion”, the court was told.
“You’re trained to live in the woods, you’re trained to kill people,” he said.
“You put a soldier in a cage, he only thinks about how can I get out of the cage.”
Mr Khalife denies escaping from prison, gathering information useful for Iran, collecting names of special forces soldiers useful to terrorists and perpetrating a bomb hoax at his barracks in Stafford.
