Police have been searching Richmond Park in London as part of the manhunt for a former soldier and terror suspect who escaped from Wandsworth Prison.
Daniel Abed Khalife outwitted guards on Wednesday morning as he fled the prison clinging to straps underneath a food delivery van, and intelligence sources have told The Independent it is “almost certain that he had some inside help”.
Police have revealed that the 21-year-old had a 65-minute window to make his break for freedom between the Bidfood delivery van he fled on leaving the prison gates at 7.32am and the police catching up with it on Richmond Road in Putney at 8.37am.
Daniel Khalife has been on the run for three days now after absconding from Wandsworth prison— (PA)
While it is feared he may have already fled abroad, police were seen searching Richmond Park on Wednesday, with tracking data showing a Metropolitan Police helicopter circling the vast park ino the early hours.
Scotland Yard confirmed to The Independent that the search in Richmond park was “still ongoing” on Friday morning, but it appeared to have been significantly scaled back.
A second police helicopter was circling over north Kensington for around 10 minutes at 6.30am on Friday morning, after searching Richmond Park for more than an hour on Thursday night, before departing at 10.45pm, flight tracking data showed. It is unclear if the second flight was connected to the search.
“If I was him I'd be hundreds of miles away from Wandsworth but we have to be certain he's not on our doorstep,” the Daily Mail quoted a source close to the investigation as saying. “The van he was in was a couple of miles from Richmond Park so it has to be searched – and from the air is the easiest way.”
At nearly 2,500 acres, Richmond Park the largest of London’s royal parks, and contains a mixed landscape of hills, woodlands and ponds.
Chloe Dobbs, 23, told The Independent that she heard the noise of several helicopters when leaving her office on Thursday evening, and described many blue lights and police vans along the main road from Kingston to Richmond.
Ms Dobbs, who has a view of Richmond Park from her bedroom window said she continued to hear sirens and the sound of helicopters until she went to sleep at 1am.
The flight path of a helicopter scouring Richmond Park in the search— (Flightradar24)
In contrast, Ms Dobbs described a more relaxed scene on Friday as sunbathers lounged in the warm weather or walked their dogs.
Patrick O’Shea, 64, who lives opposite Richmond Gate, said: “I heard some helicopters last night. And I saw a couple of police cars speeding into the park this morning, around 9am, when I was walking my dog.”
Tom Brereton, 37, from Kingston, said he was on his daily walk from Kingston to Richmond Gate this morning, as he told The Independent: “I’ve walked through this morning, it isn’t closed off. I haven’t seen any police on the ground. But two helicopters have been flying over.”
Khalife, a military computer engineer who is accused of planting fake bombs at a military base, allegedly “graduated” to attempted spying for Iran, The Independent was told by a security official on Thursday.
The soldier has been charged under the Official Secrets Act with collecting information about fellow members of the armed forces which could be of benefit to an enemy. It is alleged that he had obtained the material from the Ministry of Defence’s Joint Personnel Administration System.
“All the indications are that this was an orchestrated job and not an opportunistic escape. It is almost certain that he had some inside help from the prison,” the intelligence official said.
Khalife, who served as an IT specialist with the Royal Signals Corps, disappeared for three weeks after allegedly planting the fake bombs devices before he was arrested on 26 January.
