Monday , 6 May 2024

UK police arrest terrorism suspect who escaped from prison

Al-Arabia – UK police on Saturday arrested a terror suspect who escaped from a London prison earlier this week, sparking a nationwide manhunt.

A general view of HMP Wandsworth in London where a British soldier awaiting trial on terror-related charges has escaped from a prison in southwest London Wednesday, Sept. 6, 2023 and police have launched an urgent manhunt. Counterterror police say Daniel Abed Khalife went missing from Wandsworth Prison early Wednesday. (Yui Mok/PA via AP)



“Metropolitan Police officers have arrested Daniel Khalife. Officers apprehended him just before 11 a.m. today in the Chiswick area, and he is currently in police custody,” the force said in a tweet.

The 21-year-old former soldier fled from Wandsworth prison in south London on Wednesday morning, probably by clinging to the bottom of a delivery van.

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His disappearance triggered a major hunt with extra security checks introduced at ports and airports amid fears he may try to flee the country.

But following confirmed sightings in southwest London, he was eventually apprehended in the Chiswick neighborhood on Saturday.

Khalife was reported to have been working in the prison kitchen when he absconded.

He last appeared in court in London on January 28 and was remanded in custody over two incidents at the Royal Air Force base in Stafford, central England, near the army barracks where he lived.

He is accused of “attempting to elicit information of a kind likely to be useful to a person committing or preparing an act of terrorism” in August 2021.

He was also charged with a bomb hoax by placing a suspect device at the RAF base on January 2 this year.

His trial at Woolwich Crown Court — attached to Belmarsh prison — had been set to begin on November 13.

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