A former soldier who broke out of prison after he was accused of spying for Iran told police he had decided to run his own entrapment operation after approaching an Iranian agent over Facebook, a court has heard.
Daniel Khalife told officers after his arrest he had always wanted to work in intelligence and was devastated when he was told his Iranian-Lebanese heritage meant he might not pass the vetting.
Instead he decided to launch his own operation, meeting Iranian agents in a park and a cemetery to receive payments and flying out to Istanbul for a meeting, Woolwich Crown Court was told.
Khalife told police he got “a bit of a thrill” out of trying to be a double agent, but struggled to gain the Iranians’ trust until he started making fake top secret documents and told them he worked for a “Gucci” unit in the British Army.
The 23-year-old, from Kingston, southwest London, is on trial accused of collecting secrets from the Royal Signals Regiment which he handed to an Iranian agent using the name David Smith.
After he was charged under the Official Secrets Act, Khalife allegedly escaped from Wandsworth Prison under a food catering van. He was recaptured three days later after a nationwide manhunt.
Khalife denies committing an act prejudicial to the safety or interests of the state, eliciting information about members of the armed forces, and escaping from lawful custody.
The ex-serviceman was originally arrested by police on 6 January last year after twice emailing MI6 and then calling MI5 twice anonymously to tell them what he had done.
‘I thought I was smart enough to do it myself’
Following his arrest, jurors heard he told police: “I wanted to be a double agent, I wanted to be kind of the middle man in contact with Iran. I’ve always hated Iran. I hate the f**king government. I’m not even joking, I hate it so much, I hate all of them.
“It might be immature, a bit crazy the way that I’m thinking but I thought I could make a difference.
“I almost thought that I was smart enough to kind of do it myself and I don’t really care what anybody says but I did. I made contact, I’d love to see somebody else do that.”
Khalife had been told he was unlikely to get vetted in order to work in his dream job, offering signals support for the special forces, and “all the cards on the table kind of just went off, all the chess pieces”.
After that, he told the police: “I don’t want to be here, I’m not interested in just sitting on a f**king radio all day. I’m better than that. I know it sounds a bit narcissistic but I felt like I was better than everyone else.”
Working in intelligence his goal ‘since I’d been a baby’
Khalife said working in intelligence was “all I’ve ever wanted to do”, the court heard, and he added: “I wanted to prove that I could do it myself and it was a bit of thrill.”
That had been his goal “since I was a baby,” he said, adding: “I would go on like the MI6 website and I would do the little quizzes that they had.”
The court in Woolwich, presided over by judge Mrs Justice Cheema-Grubb, heard that Khalife described how he had found an agent called Hamed Ghashgavi through looking at a list of individuals sanctioned by the US government and approaching him on Facebook.
“I made contact with him and I explained to him my job, I kind of blagged everything. I was like ‘oh I do this, that, that’. It took well over a year for them to finally trust me,” he told police.
Khalife told officers he made fake documents to hand over, adding: “I know it sounds like crazy, you’ll probably think ‘what the hell is this guy’ but from the start the whole intention was to make contact with the security service. I wanted to be a double agent.”
He said he saw that was “the only way where I could do this work without getting the security clearance, because it’s a bit of a grey area”.
The documents led the Iranian agent to “finally believe me”, he told officers, but then they wanted to know which unit he worked for.
“I made it up and said like a really Gucci unit. I got given a letter saying congratulations for finishing your course, so I made an exact copy but I put that I was in like some Gucci unit – terminology that we use for a special, specialised unit.
“From there they really started to believe me.”
‘MI5 wasn’t calling me back’
Khalife said he began to realise he needed help but MI5 did not return his calls, the court heard.
“I only intended to do this for like a month on my own before making contact and it’s been two, three years and it’s just been so f**ked,” he said.
“You know you’re so detached from everybody because you’re doing it all on your own. I’m not looking for sympathy or anything but all I wanted was just some help. You know, you’ve got whole intelligence agency, the whole of the IRGC [Iranian Revolutionary Guard] and you’re f**king left here and I’m getting nothing in return. I’m calling MI5 and they’re not calling me back.”
He told the police that he was “just itching for you guys to do this because I didn’t want to carry on anymore”.
“Mate I just turned 20, I was this f**king teenager mate. Everyone was going to nightclubs and I’m sat there with a f**king intelligence officer screaming at my ear, telling me that he wants me to go to Iran and I’m thinking about if they’re going to kill me or not.
“I didn’t know what to do. At that point where they didn’t call me back I thought ‘I can’t call them again’. I was embarrassed.”
‘I contacted MI6… MI5, what am I going to do, dial 999?’
Jurors were told that in a second interview, he added: “All of the plans I had to work in the intelligence community in this country, that is what I wanted and it just didn’t work out.
“I didn’t really have any other plans, what else could I have done? I contacted MI6, I contacted MI5, what am I going to do, dial 999?
“I didn’t know what to do, I was just so f**king stuck and then this happens, which I was expecting actually. I had so much proof to give them if they just called me back.”
The trial continues.
