Spooks helped to snare Britain’s most wanted fugitive after they bugged devices of associates linked to the dangerous escapee.
Daniel Khalife was finally cornered and seized on Saturday following a four-day hunt.
The former soldier, 21, was charged with escaping custody and is due to appear at Westminster Magistrates’ Court today.
His capture, by a plain-clothes officer on a canal towpath, came after MI5, MI6 and GCHQ teamed up with undercover and counter-terrorism cops in a major coup.
The interception of sensitive communications led them to raid a house in Richmond, South-west London.
Commander Dominic Murphy, head of the Metropolitan Police’s Counter Terrorism Command, said: “He was fully cooperative, handcuffed and arrested.”
Asked about the length of time it took to arrest him, the officer added: “I don’t recognise 75 hours is a long time to find somebody unlawfully at large from a prison.”
The outcome was an initial major success for the new Counter Terrorism Operations Centre, which is based at a multi-million-pound secret location in West London. Mr Murphy said: “This was the first big operation the CTOC did and it shows this is working.”
The success came after one of the most audacious breaches of security in British penal history.
Khalife is accused of trying to spy for an enemy state, believed to be Iran, obtaining information likely to be useful to a person committing or preparing an act of terrorism, and plotting a fake bomb hoax.
He was held at Category B Wandsworth Prison in South-west London ahead of a November trial. His escape is said to have started in the prison kitchens – where he held a job – after he attached himself to the underside of a food delivery lorry on Wednesday.
After the raid in Richmond, the trail briefly went cold but it dramatically sparked into life soon after with sightings of him in nearby Chiswick. Khalife was then spotted six miles away on a stolen bike alongside the Grand Union Canal.
His time on the run ended at 10.41am when a plain-clothes detective hauled him off his bike and detained him at gunpoint. He allegedly screamed: “It’s not me. I ain’t done anything.” He had a sleeping bag plus food and drink.
Footage showed the suspect in a white T-shirt and dark shorts, handcuffed sitting on a dusty path alongside the water at Greenford, West London, just 12 miles from Wandsworth Prison.
Witnesses claimed he was seen winking and laughing after his arrest. It is understood a warrant for the eavesdropping operation was issued after police made a significant breakthrough on Friday.
Attention will now focus on whether the escape was an inside job involving corrupt guards.
