Former Soldier Who Escaped From a British Prison Is Recaptured in London

Three days after a former British Army soldier going through terrorism fees engineered an audacious escape from a London jail, setting off an intense nationwide manhunt, he was captured by the police on Saturday morning just a few miles approach.

The Metropolitan Police Service stated the fugitive, Daniel Abed Khalife, was apprehended simply earlier than 11 a.m. within the residential London district of Chiswick. He broke out of Wandsworth jail on Wednesday morning by strapping himself to the underside of a meals supply van, based on authorities officers.

Mr. Khalife, 21, is scheduled to go on trial in November on fees that he left faux bombs at a army base to stir fears of a terrorist assault. He can also be accused of gathering info that might profit a overseas enemy, reported to be Iran.

The seek for Mr. Khalife turned one of many largest in latest British historical past, with lots of of law enforcement officials blanketing airports, seaports, railway stations and the English Channel tunnel. On Friday evening, police helicopters circled above the Thames, because the search zeroed in on Chiswick, an prosperous west London district on the north financial institution of the river, about seven miles from the jail.

Police officers stated Mr. Khalife’s army coaching may need helped him elude the huge manhunt for longer than anticipated. Despite about 50 calls from the general public with potential leads about his whereabouts, the police stated, they’d not acquired a dependable report of a sighting of the fugitive till Friday, greater than 48 hours after his escape.

Mr. Khalife had “skills that perhaps some sections of the public don’t have,” Commander Dominic Murphy, the top of the Counter Terrorism Command of the Metropolitan Police Service, stated to reporters.

Mr. Khalife’s escape rapidly bubbled right into a political headache for Britain’s Conservative authorities. Former correctional officers stated a jail break at Wandsworth was not a shock given the depleted state of the ability and overcrowding. The opposition Labour Party stated the jail was short-staffed — symptomatic of an overstretched felony justice system beneath Tory authorities.

There had been additionally questions on why Mr. Khalife was not being held at a maximum-security jail, which is customary for terrorism suspects. Wandsworth is a Category B jail, one degree beneath most safety. Category A prisons are sometimes used to accommodate prisoners charged with terrorism or whose escape would pose excessive hazard to public security or nationwide safety.

The Metropolitan Police stated they didn’t view Mr. Khalife as a grave menace to the general public, although on Wednesday it urged individuals to name the police emergency telephone line in the event that they noticed him, moderately than threat any contact with him.

“We have no information which indicates, nor any reason to believe, that Khalife poses a threat to the wider public,” Commander Murphy stated, “but our advice if you do see him is not to approach him.”

In addition to the allegations of planting faux explosive units, Mr. Khalife has been accused of accumulating info that may very well be helpful to an enemy. Some newspapers reported that he was aiding Iran.

Mr. Khalife joined the military in 2019 and was primarily based at Ministry of Defense Stafford, often known as Beacon Barracks, in Stafford, England. At a courtroom listening to after his preliminary arrest, prosecutors stated he planted the units “with the intention of inducing in another the belief the item was likely to explode or ignite.” He has denied the costs.

There had been solely sketchy particulars about how Mr. Khalife managed to flee, although preliminary studies had been sensational sufficient.

Straps discovered beneath the supply car instructed Mr. Khalife “may have held onto the underside of it in order to escape,” Alex Chalk, the Conservative lawmaker answerable for justice points, advised Parliament on Thursday. Police officers stated the escape confirmed indicators of advance planning, and they didn’t rule out the likelihood that he had been helped by different prisoners or guards contained in the jail.

The Times of London reported that he had been working within the jail kitchens. Mr. Khalife was sporting a white T-shirt, red-and-white checkered pants and brown steel-toe boots, based on the preliminary police assertion. He is believed to have modified garments, and on Saturday, the police stated he was sporting a black baseball cap, black T-shirt and dark-colored bottoms.

A former head of safety at Wandsworth, Ian Acheson, advised the BBC Radio 4’s Today program that the escape was “incredibly embarrassing for the prison service, but it’s not entirely surprising.”

“There would have had to have been multiple breaches of human and physical security,” Mr. Acheson stated, including that “Wandsworth, like so many of our flagship prisons, is in free fall” due to a scarcity of sources.

After a shock inspection of Wandsworth in 2021, the federal government’s chief inspector of prisons described an overcrowded facility the place a scarcity of employees compelled managers to frequently cancel actions equivalent to train time for inmates. A “serious security breach” had led to a earlier jail escape in 2019, it famous.

“We were given some assurance that action to prevent further escapes had been taken in response to the investigation that followed,” the report stated. But it additionally referred to “some concerns in the physical aspects of security.”

In Parliament, a senior Labour shadow minister, Pat McFadden, requested the federal government why a “terror suspect like Mr. Khalife was being held at a lower-category-security prison like Wandsworth in the first place.”

Oliver Dowden, the Conservative deputy prime minister, stated the federal government had opened an investigation into Mr. Khalife’s escape to make sure “we learn the lessons of what led to this.”

Prime Minister Rishi Sunak stated Britain had 4,000 extra correctional officers now than in 2017, and he rejected Labour’s criticism. “During their 13 years in office,” Mr. Sunak stated to ITV News, “there were 10 times the number of escaped prisoners than you’ve seen in the 13 years of Conservative-led government.”

While Britain has added officers just lately, authorities information confirmed that the variety of full-time jail officers had fallen by about 2,000 because the Conservatives got here to energy in a coalition with the Liberal Democrats in 2010.

And whereas jail escapes have develop into uncommon in Britain — simply 17 since 2010, in contrast with 177 between 2007 and 2010 — these numbers declined quickly through the first few years of Prime Minister Tony Blair’s authorities. The variety of escapes was a lot increased beneath the earlier Tory authorities.

Wandsworth was the positioning of some of the well-known modern-day escapes. In 1965, Ronnie Biggs, a member of the gang that carried out the Great Train Robbery of 1963, scaled the jail’s wall with a rope ladder and was spirited away in a van parked exterior. He was at giant for 36 years earlier than voluntarily returning to Britain, and a jail cell, in 2001.