The spy who loved merengue: Double agent British soldier jailed for passing military secrets to Iran walked free after THREE years to become a flamboyant salsa teacher in Brighton
A British soldier jailed for passing NATO secrets to Iran while acting as a personal interpreter for the alliance’s top commander in Afghanistan has been released from prison and is teaching salsa to unsuspecting students in Brighton, the Mail on Sunday has revealed.
Tehran-born Esmail Mohammed Gamasai dual Iranian national Daniel James was convicted at the Old Bailey in November 2008 after passing confidential details about alliance operations to an Iranian military attache in Kabul.
In March 2006 he was deployed to Afghanistan as the personal translator of General Sir David Richards, the British officer who commands all NATO forces in the country, giving him privileged access to some of the alliance’s most sensitive operational intelligence.
In a series of encrypted emails to Colonel Mohammed Hossein Heydari, he passed on confidential details of troop movements, fuel supplies, ammunition and insurgency activities to his native country, writing: ‘I am at your service.’
He was sentenced to ten years in prison after an intelligence chief warned the court that his closeness to senior military officers meant ‘information could be passed on that could pose a threat to the lives of UK and NATO service personnel in Afghanistan and elsewhere’.
However, he was released from prison in December 2011 after serving three years of his sentence. She returned to Brighton, where she now lives under the name Dani Jay.
When contacted by the MoS, James, now 63, said: ‘That was a long time ago. I left him behind. I don’t want to talk about it; ‘I’m just getting on with my life.’
His ex-wife Alethea Haralambous, whom he married in 1982, lives a few miles away in Hove. James’s partner, who raised his son Gino from the age of four, said he had only seen James a few times since his release. Gino, 38, a carpenter in nearby Portslade, is not in contact with his biological father.
Tehran-born Esmail Mohammed Gamasai dual Iranian national Daniel James (pictured) was convicted at the Old Bailey in November 2008 after passing confidential details about alliance operations to an Iranian military attache in Kabul.
James (left) was deployed to Afghanistan in March 2006 as the personal translator of General Sir David Richards (right), the British officer who commands all NATO forces in the country, giving him privileged access to some of the alliance’s most sensitive operational intelligence.
He was released from prison in December 2011 after serving three years of his sentence. James (pictured) returned to Brighton and now lives under the name Dani Jay
With no family to return to, James, who told his trial he turned to espionage after racist colleagues passed him over for promotion, devoted himself to teaching salsa and declared himself a ‘No’ on promotional posters. Number 1 in Brighton.
He gave weekly lessons at the King & Queen pub in Marlborough Place; here students paid as little as £3 per lesson and hosted special nights featuring guest teachers and live music.
His most ambitious production was a full salsa concert at the King Alfred Ballroom on Hove seafront, where he performed as DJ Dani Jay alongside a cast of professional dancers and live Latin band Salseology.
He was able to do this because although he was found guilty of spying against British forces, he was never stripped of his UK citizenship; This means he is free to live and work in the country he betrayed.
James also holds most of the Brighton property portfolio, whose mortgages (the trial heard left him £25,000 in debt) were among his reasons for spying.
The owner of the ground floor flat and two of three others in the same building owns it, yards from Brighton Marina, on a road where a similar flat sold for £322,000 in May 2022.
He kept his properties despite being ordered to repay legal aid costs of around £250,000 after his trial found he should never have been entitled to taxpayer-funded support.
Neighbors on the quiet cul-de-sac where James lived were unaware of his past. One said: ‘I’ve lived here for four years and never heard of him.’
James, who later moved away from his family, devoted himself to teaching salsa. He held weekly classes at the King & Queen pub in Marlborough Place (pictured); here students paid as little as £3 per lesson.
He owns his ground-floor flat (pictured) and two of three others in the same building, just yards from Brighton Marina, on a road where a similar flat sold for £322,000 in May 2022.
It came after Daniel Khalife (pictured), whose mother is a former Royal Signals soldier from Iran, was sentenced to 14 years in prison at Woolwich Crown Court in February 2025 for passing secret documents and names of special forces personnel to Iranian intelligence over a two-year period.
Intelligence and security officials who remember the incident say his continued presence in the UK is an insult to those serving in Afghanistan.
Colonel Philip Ingram, a former Army intelligence officer who served in Iraq, said: ‘Daniel James was party to some of the most sensitive negotiations being held in Afghanistan, and these were being passed directly to the Iranians. This likely resulted in the deaths of Allied troops.
‘As a dual citizen, his citizenship could and should have been revoked and he should have been thrown out of the country to go and live in Iran. He let his colleagues and his country down.’
Professor Anthony Glees, a national security expert at the University of Buckingham, added: ‘His shamelessness is abhorrent to decent people. He shouldn’t be teaching salsa in Brighton, he should be living in exile in Tehran.
‘The sentence was insultingly mild. ‘There was a real chance of people dying because of his espionage and a ten-year prison sentence for every British soldier who fought and died against the Taliban and indeed Iran was a crime.’
Parliament’s Intelligence and Security Committee warned last year that Iran posed one of the most serious state-based threats to Britain’s national security.
In his annual threat update last October, MI5 director-general Sir Ken McCallum revealed that the service was tracking more than 20 potentially lethal Iran-backed plots in a single year; He warned that the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps widely used low-level criminals as proxies to conduct operations on British soil.
In February 2025, Daniel Khalife, whose mother is a former Royal Signals soldier from Iran, was sentenced to 14 years in prison at Woolwich Crown Court for passing secret documents and names of special forces personnel to Iranian intelligence over a two-year period.
