Daniel Khalife pleads not guilty to escaping custody at Wandsworth prison
Daniel Khalife pleads not guilty to escaping custody at Wandsworth prison
Former soldier was on remand charged with terrorism offences and is now in Belmarsh prison in south-east London
I'm intrigued by his Not Guilty plea for escaping custody when he was previously in custody, and then found to have escaped it. I don't know much about legal procedures, but that does seem quite bold.
He's got absolutely no reason to plead guilty. He's not going to get a lighter sentence so he might as well cost them as much as possible by forcing a trial, and extending the news coverage of this embarrassing story.
Not a fan of the guy or his ideology but, from his perspective, this makes perfect sense.
It’s like obviously guilty people appealing their sentence: they have a right to do so and as such their solicitor will recommend that they do it. There’s almost no chance of them getting their sentence overturned or reduced, but you don’t ask, you don’t get.
Maybe he somehow fell and got stuck under the truck, and then got lost on his way back to the prison?
As far as I know you can enter a not guilty plea regardless of the circumstances. Maybe he wants to appear a martyr, and use the resulting trial to attract attention.
I want him to win just to see the bold story that someone made him not guilt.
It would need to be fantastic and I want to see that.
“Wasn’t me.“
Proper Bart Simpson energy
This is the best summary I could come up with:
The former soldier Daniel Khalife has pleaded not guilty at the Old Bailey in London to escaping from HMP Wandsworth, where he was on remand after being charged with terrorism offences earlier this year.
He is accused of escaping from prison on 6 September by allegedly strapping himself to the underside of a food delivery vehicle.
Khalife was arrested on a canal towpath in west London at 10.41am on 9 September after being pulled off a push bike by a plainclothes counter-terrorism officer.
He had been in Wandsworth prison 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.
Mr Justice Jeremy Baker joined the charges and Khalife will be tried at Woolwich crown court on 13 November for all four offences.
He will reappear at the Old Bailey for a review hearing on 13 October, when the trial date may be discussed.
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