Alleged Iranian spy Daniel Khalife claims he wanted to become an MI5 agent

Daniel Khalifeof which a 23-year-old British soldier is accused spying on behalf of the Islamic Republicdenied being a spy for Iran and claimed he had tried to become a double agent after watching the TV show HomelanderBritish media reported this on Friday.

The 23-year-old alleged Iranian agent subsequently made headlines earlier escaping custody from Wandsworth Prison for three days, leading to a nationwide manhunt.

Khalife, who is no longer a member of the British Armed Forces, is also accused of leaving a fake bomb on a desk and disappearing from his barracks in 2023 and then escaping from prison, prompting a brief nationwide manhunt.

Khalife had claimed he was receiving unwanted attention from sex offenders in the prison where he was staying and that because of his military background he feared attacks from convicted terrorists if he was transferred to Belmarsh prison, Sky News reported.

Escape from prison

The 23-year-old had first started imitating a prison escape while working in the kitchen in August last year. He claimed that after he was arrested, little was done to prompt him to take the “full measure”, he told the jury.

A wanted sign depicting Daniel Abed Khalife, a former soldier suspected of terrorist crimes, is displayed near Wandsworth Prison from which he escaped, in London, Britain, September 7, 2023. (credit: Anna Gordon/REUTERS)

Khalife escaped on September 6.

“They did normal checks with torches, but they couldn’t find me. After that, a governor came to the tunnel and said, ‘Have you searched the vehicle?’

“I looked up. There was action around the truck.”

Despite his escape from prison and alleged links to Tehran, Khalife denies he planned to leave Britain.

Khalife congratulated the officer who recovered him, the Guardian reported. The officer confirmed that he had complied with all orders given to him upon his arrest.

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“You got me,” he reportedly told the officer as he was apprehended. “Complete nonsense.”

When asked by the court why he had not turned himself in if he had no plans to escape, Khalife replied: “I finally showed what a foolish idea it was to have someone with my skills in prison.” What good was that to anyone?’

“I accept that I left prison without my permission,” he said. “I absolutely accept that I should not have done what I did.”

Clashes with IRGC agents

The court was reportedly told that the 23-year-old had attempted to speak to intelligence officers but was passed over because his mother is Iranian and therefore he could not pass the screening.

“I was pretty devastated,” he said after finding out he would be excluded from a role, according to the Jersey Evening Post.

“To this day, I don’t think I’ve ever met a single person living outside Iran who isn’t hostile to the government,” Khalife said. “My mother detests the regime, probably the country too, and that goes for all my family… me and my family are against the regime in Iran.”

Khalife reportedly told MI5 he wanted to become a double agent for Britain and expected congratulations after the interaction. Instead, he said he was faced with arrests that felt like a “slap in the face.”

The wanna-be cop claimed his arrests were not in “the public interest.”

“I have not done anything to harm our national security. “I wanted to put myself in a position where I could help my country,” he said. “I believed that I could continue my work which was actually in the state, the state being Iran.”

Prosecutors say Khalife raised about 1,500 pounds ($2,000) in 2019 on instructions from his handler and two weeks later anonymously sent an email to Britain’s foreign intelligence service MI6, saying he wanted to “work as a double agent “.

According to the US News outlet, Khalife contacted an Iranian recently sanctioned by the United States on Facebook. The sanctioned individual, named Hamed Ghashghavi, put Khalife in touch with Iranian intelligence officers.

“They looked at me as a young boy and I could see… they were trying to groom me and bond with me,” he said.

Hollywood inspiration

Khalife said the idea of becoming a double agent came to him while he was enjoying the series Homelander.

“I had seen that one of the characters in the program had wrongly defected to a certain country and used that position to advance the national security interests of that character’s country,” he said. ‘The country in question, Iran, thought it was real. She did it to promote the interests of her own country.’

“I really love my country. All I wanted to do was help. I never meant to do any harm, I never did any harm,” he told jurors. “It’s tragic that it has come to this and I would do everything I can to get back to my career.”

Between May 1, 2019 and January 6, 2022, Khalife has pleaded not guilty to charges of an act prejudicial to the security or interests of the state under the Official Secrets Act and not guilty to a charge under the Terrorism Act of the eliciting information about armed forces personnel on August 2, 2021, committing a bomb fraud on or before January 2, 2023 and escaping from prison on September 6 last year.

Reuters contributed to this report.