A phone registered to an inmate’s girlfriend at HMP Wandsworth proved critical in helping Daniel Khalife evade the authorities for three days during a nationwide manhunt, a court has heard.
The iPhone was undetected inside the prison for six weeks in 2023, while its owner, Adeel Khan, worked 190 kitchen shifts alongside Khalife. The soldier escaped from the prison in September that year but was eventually caught and convicted of spying for Iran.
Prosecutors at Snaresbrook Crown Court say that phone is what enabled Khalife to get hold of cash within hours of his escape. Another man, Imran Chowdhury, is accused of withdrawing the money – with both Khan and Chowdhury now on trial for charges of hindering Khalife’s recapture. Both deny the charges. The trial is ongoing.
Khan began using the phone, an iPhone 8 registered to his girlfriend rather than his himself, on 20 August 2023, prosecutors told the court. Registering a phone to someone outside the prison is a known way of defeating basic call-record checks.
The kitchen rota
Khan and Khalife knew each other through working together in the prison kitchens. When Khalife was arrested, he was carrying a diary in which he had written Khan’s name, prison number and mobile number. An entry from 21 August 2023, a fortnight before the escape, recorded a “failed” attempt, marked with a star, the court heard. Read alongside the diary and the shift pattern, it shows the eventual escape was planned and rehearsed over weeks inside the prison, rather than a lucky, spontaneous act.
Khalife escaped on 6 September 2023, sliding under a food delivery lorry in a sling made from bedsheets and carabiners. Prosecutor Tom Williams told the court Khalife left “with no money and no phone,” and “needed both of those things to stand any chance” of evading the manhunt that followed. That evening, Khan texted his girlfriend asking her to put £120 into Chowdhury’s account. Chowdhury is alleged to have withdrawn £400 from a cash machine near Richmond shortly afterwards, caught on CCTV walking with Khalife towards the river. “The prosecution’s case is that Mr Khan was providing instructions from inside Wandsworth prison and that Mr Chowdhury was the man on the ground,” Williams told the court.
Khalife used the money to buy clothes and a cheap Samsung phone in Hammersmith, which he used to send a message to his Iranian handlers: “I wait.” He was arrested three days later, on 9 September, near a canal in Northolt, carrying £200 and the diary.
HM Wandsworth security failures
Security failures at HMP Wandsworth have been a persistent problem, including organised crime inside the prison’s own walls, and everything else from drone drops to smuggled phones. Inspectors have ranked it as one of the country’s worst-performing prisons.
In May 2024, the prison’s governor resigned following a local accountability campaign over conditions and security. In July 2025, a drone was caught on camera dropping a package into the grounds, and by January 2026 three people had been arrested over a further drone smuggling attempt. In August 2025, we reported that organised crime networks had operated inside the prison’s own security perimeter, and that official inspectors had ranked HMP Wandsworth among the worst-performing prisons in the country. Each of those stories, taken alone, showed that contraband and security failures kept recurring. Khan’s phone shows what one of those failures can be used for once it goes undetected long enough.
Not the national story
The case against Khan and Chowdhury has drawn national coverage chiefly because of who Khalife is: a former soldier jailed for 14 years and three months in 2025 for passing information to Iran and staging a bomb hoax. The trial has also heard that Chowdhury worked at The Telegraph newspaper in a technical, non-journalist role, and that jurors had to declare they had never worked for the paper before the trial began, to avoid any conflict of interest.
Khan has already pleaded guilty to possessing the phone but both he and Chowdhury deny hindering Khalife’s recapture. The trial continues.
