Woman arrested over Daniel Khalife alleged prison escape

A woman has been arrested on suspicion of assisting an offender by detectives investigating the alleged escape of prisoner Daniel Khalife.

The 25-year-old was detained at an address in east London, the Metropolitan Police said.

It comes after the arrest of a 24-year-old man last month on suspicion of assisting an offender.

Ex-soldier Mr Khalife, 22, was captured after an alleged four days on the run from Wandsworth prison last year.

He is accused of escaping from lawful custody.

Neither the 24-year-old man nor the 25-year-old woman arrested are members of staff at HMP Wandsworth, Met Police said. They both remain on bail until a date in late April.

Mr Khalife is due go on trial at the Old Bailey in October after pleading not guilty to charges including that he escaped from HMP Wandsworth in south-west London.

He allegedly escaped the prison by strapping himself to the underside of a food delivery vehicle with bedsheets on 6 September.

The former soldier is then alleged to have spent four days on the run, sparking a huge search operation to find him.

Police said he was arrested by a plain-clothes counter-terrorism officer four days after his alleged escape while riding a bike along a canal towpath in Northolt, west London.

He will also face trial in relation to three other charges, which are:

Det Ch Supt Gareth Rees, head of operations for the Met's Counter Terrorism Command, which is leading the investigation, said: "We continue to carry out a thorough investigation into the full circumstances of the alleged escape of Khalife, and we have now arrested two other people as part of this."