Daniel Khalife may be dodging thermal cameras by hiding underground in Richmond Park, say experts who believe a friend may have told him how to get off lorry without being caught on CCTV – and may harbour him for weeks before he tries to flee UK
- Terrorist Daniel Khalife, 21, escaped from HMP Wandsworth in South London
A suspected terrorist on the run in the UK after an audacious jailbreak may be using similarly outlandish techniques to evade the authorities, experts fear.
Daniel Khalife, 21, escaped from HMP Wandsworth in South London, by strapping himself to the bottom of a lorry.
And authorities in tracking and survival think this out-of-the-box thinking, combined with his army training could make him a ghost in the wind.
Possible techniques he could have employed include hiding underground to evade thermal cameras and even laying low in a safe house.
SAS veteran Chris Ryan said his 6ft 2 height would make him noticeable.
But he feared others will have done a recce to help him fee: ‘He will have given multiple areas to exit that vehicle to make his escape.
‘If he’s gone into the park, because he’s a soldier he understands thermal imagery, he would have known the police helicopter would have been up there scanning the area.
Daniel Khalife is described as being of slim build, with short brown hair and 6ft 2ins tall
‘There are a lot drainage systems on the park so he would have got underground where he wouldn’t have been picked up.
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‘He’s got a water source, the weather is very good he’ll be comfortable that way.
‘If he’s had help he’ll be in a safe house now so all he’s got to do is lie low for a couple of weeks before making a move. Is he living in a garden shed in one of the houses back onto the park?’ he told TalkTV.
Retired police sergeant and ground operative on TV hit Hunted Mel Thomas said it will be down to the ‘resilience’ of Khalife, but the hot UK weather will make it more comfortable if he is hiding ‘in plain sight’.
Mr Thomas, 54, who served in the police for 30 years, said: ‘What you’ve got to consider is that we consider ourselves to have the best military in the world, so he’s had the best training – you can’t dispute that.
‘Because you’re no longer in the Army or in the armed forces, it doesn’t mean you become untrained overnight, that experience is always with you.
‘What the organisations have got against them is it’s good weather, it’s not cold at night, so even sleeping rough is not going to be uncomfortable.
Chris Jones, 53, told BBC how he prepared food in the prison kitchens while Mr Khalife unloaded lorry deliveries. Pictured: A general view of HMP Wandsworth
‘You could happily find somewhere comfortable and, as an ex-military individual, he’ll be used to sleeping outside.
‘What will come into play more than anything else will be the individual’s resilience.’
Mr Thomas said it is a ‘needle in the haystack’ case, and the key to finding Khalife is how quickly members of the public report potential sightings.
‘The biggest thing is 70 million separate CCTV you have in the country, and that’s the members of the public,’ he told PA.
‘It’s all about people dropping those little clues, those traces that the organisations can pick up on and follow. It’s very similar to Hunted and Celebrity Hunted.
‘If there’s a sighting in a town and we get to that town very quickly, and those people haven’t moved away because they don’t know they’ve been spotted, that gives us more opportunities to catch them.
‘And it’s the same when someone is on the run.’
Mr Thomas said the Metropolitan Police cannot rule out the fugitive getting a plane, train or sailing further away, depending on the network he had in place if the escape was pre-planned, as the head of the Met has suggested.
Khalife is believed to have escaped from HMP Wandsworth in south-west London on Wednesday by strapping himself to the bottom of a delivery lorry after leaving the prison kitchen in a cook’s uniform.
Mr Thomas added: ‘It does take some guts to be able to think about crawling underneath a vehicle and holding on it, it’s the kind of thing that you only see in films, it’s not the kind of thing you imagine somebody would do.
‘You have to remember you’ve got an exhaust system underneath that vehicle which is going to get pretty hot.
‘It would have been hot already actually travelling to the premises itself, so for someone to think about crawling under and hiding under a vehicle… you’ve got to go over things like traffic-calming measures, he could have been easily crushed.’
The retired police officer, who was awarded the King’s Police Medal for distinguished service, said questions will be asked about the ‘level of security in the establishment’ and it is now about ‘learning lessons’.
Mr Thomas added: ‘What I would say to anybody is not to compromise themselves by assisting a fugitive unlawfully at large, because obviously there are sanctions and penalties for doing that.
‘What I would say to the individual is more often than not, these situations only end up one way, and they’d be better off just giving themselves up and handing themselves in.’
Jonathan Hall KC told Radio 4’s World at One programme Mr Khalife has been “charged with collecting information which might be useful to an enemy” and that he should have been held in a higher security prison.
“I would have thought someone charged with espionage should be held more securely…just based on what the authorities knew”
“They knew he was charged with an offence under the Official Secrets Act, that’s a very serious offence… one would have thought that you would look at the advanced capabilities that might come with working for or having relations with a hostile state” he said.
Mr Hall also warned against legislation to make all of those accused of terrorism to be placed in a category A prison
“I’d be worried if there was a reaction which said now every person suspected of terrorism should be categorised as a high escape risk”
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