Daniel Khalife has been charged with escaping from custody at HMP Wandsworth, the Metropolitan police have said. The former soldier, 21, was arrested on a canal towpath in west London at 10.41am on Saturday after being pulled off a push bike by a plainclothes counter-terrorism officer. His capture followed a mass land and air search over four days after he went missing from the prison on Wednesday. The Met said a member of the public reported seeing a man matching Khalife’s description walking away from a Bidfood van that had stopped near the south entrance to Wandsworth roundabout on Wednesday morning. Officers then carried out a search in the Richmond area and, although Khalife was not found there, the force received a number of calls from the public with sightings of the suspect nearby. Police checked people’s gardens, stopped cars and inspected boots, and asked residents for their IDs throughout Saturday morning. Khalife was eventually found on a canal towpath in Northolt, about eight miles (13km) from where a member of the public had last seen him. Before his escape, Khalife had been on remand after being charged with terror offences in January. The Met said in a statement: “Daniel Abed Khalife, 21, will appear in custody at Westminster magistrates court on Monday 11 September charged as follows: On the 6th day of September 2023, then being a prisoner in His Majesty’s Prison at Wandsworth, being remanded in custody pending trial as ordered at the central criminal court on the 21st day of July 2023, escaped, contrary to common law.” Questions have been raised over the security of the prison after the police search. The justice secretary, Alex Chalk, said on Sunday that about 40 prisoners at HMP Wandsworth had been moved out of the category B jail. He told Sky’s Sunday Morning With Trevor Phillips programme that a preliminary investigation into the Victorian facility had found that the relevant procedures and security staff were in place. Dozens of individuals on remand have been moved to different sites “out of an abundance of caution”, he said, amid questions over why a former soldier accused of a terror offence was not in the highest security prison.