The whole country was left baffled this week by news that a prisoner managed to escape from HMP Wandsworth in south-west London, while awaiting trial on terror charges. Was it an inside job? An MI5 level conspiracy where they wanted him out for some reason?

Nope, turns out Daniel Abed Khalife simply escaped out the front gates by hanging on to the bottom of a food delivery truck.

As per Sky News, the 22-year-old was working in the kitchens and still wearing his red chequered chef’s trousers when he slipped out of HMP Wandsworth without anyone noticing. Professor Ian Acheson, a former head of security at the jail, said has called the situation a ‘catastrophic system failure’.

Speaking to Radio 4 today, he said:

Well, at best, this is a catastrophic system failure that actually starts with the allocation of Khalife to Wandsworth and ends with a terror suspect working in a prison kitchen of an establishment in crisis (and) escaping in a vehicle.

So, it’s incredibly embarrassing for the prison service but it’s not entirely surprising given what we know about what’s going on Wandsworth at the moment.

Jeez, what a disaster. No one is quite sure why Khalife was being held at a category B prison rather than a high-security jail like Belmarsh, but it’s still pretty incredible that he managed to find a way to escape. He probably couldn’t believe his luck that it actually worked.

Khalife is said to have made his way to the prison’s delivery area still in his chef’s uniform after serving breakfast to fellow inmates shortly before 8am yesterday. An insider told The Sun:

He slipped under the delivery van dropping off groceries at the kitchen and strapped himself under the vehicle.

After the food supplies were unloaded, the van drove back out through the main gate and was given a cursory inspection before being waved through. Then he disappeared into thin air.

Counter-terror police have now placed all kinds of alerts around the country to ensure Khalife doesn’t manage to flee. He’s obviously a slippery customer though so who knows what he’ll come up with?

Khalife was awaiting trial after allegedly planting a fake bomb at an RAF base and gathering information that might be useful to terrorists or enemies of the UK, and was discharged from the Army in May 2023. So – joined the army, became a spy for a foreign government, got arrested and charged with terror offences, then broke out of prison, all by 22 years of age. Quite the CV if you’re into that sort of thing.

Khalife has denied all charges against him, but the fact he did a runner from prison probably won’t help his case that much. His trial date was set for November 13 at Woolwich Crown Court – let’s hope they track him down before then.

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