Latest news with #Afghan refugees
Times
3 days ago
- Politics
- Times
How spies and soldiers will face the blame over Afghan data breach
On a dark winter's day in December 2023, John Healey was escorted into a secure briefing room at the Ministry of Defence and handed a brown envelope. The shadow defence secretary had just received a superinjunction, prohibiting him from repeating a word of what he was about to be told by James Heappey, the armed forces minister. The contents of their discussion would not become public for another 18 months, as the Conservative government used the courts to prevent The Times and other newspapers from revealing a catastrophic data leak involving thousands of Afghans seeking refuge in Britain from the Taliban. Healey left the building shocked by the gravity of the situation, knowing he would almost certainly have to handle the fallout when the veil of secrecy was finally lifted. That moment arrived on Tuesday. In parliament, Healey, now the defence secretary, told MPs how a defence official had inadvertently leaked a list containing the details of nearly 19,000 Afghans in February 2022. It also contained the names of more than 100 British special forces troops, MI6 spies and military officers who had vouched for some of the Afghans. The previous government's response had been to spend hundreds of millions of pounds bringing several thousand impacted individuals and their families to the UK via a secret Afghan Response Route (ARR), without parliament or voters knowing. Sir Keir Starmer and shadow senior cabinet ministers had been looped in shortly after entering government but Healey's wife only discovered what her husband had been dealing with when he delivered the statement. After days of recriminations and Conservative buck-passing, many questions around the scandal remain unanswered this weekend. In Westminster, the defence committee has vowed to investigate the cover-up, with Sir Ben Wallace and Sir Grant Shapps, the former defence secretaries, likely to be interrogated when MPs return from summer recess. • Grant Shapps 'trying to rewrite history' on Afghan leak While both have defended the superinjunction, Rishi Sunak, the prime minister who presided over it, has not said a word and is overseas. The intelligence and security committee (ISC), a body made up of peers and MPs that scrutinises the UK's spy agencies, is furious it was kept in the dark and has demanded a host of government documents around the leak and the cover-up. It has statutory powers, and will launch its own inquiry in due course. Lord Beamish, who chairs the committee, is equally incensed by MI6's failure to inform the committee of the potential disclosure of its agents' identities. Despite providing quarterly updates to the ISC on any major developments, the service failed to mention the issue at any point. The ISC has demanded answers from MI6 and the committee is set to summon Sir Richard Moore, the outgoing chief of the intelligence service, or his successor, Blaise Metreweli, to explain the omission. Sir Lindsay Hoyle, the Commons Speaker, has also commissioned a review into how the government gagged senior parliamentary figures, himself and the Lord Speaker included, and the constitutional issues this raises. He hopes to update MPs either on Monday or Tuesday. But the biggest unknown is the long-term impact on public perception of parliament, the two main political parties, and British democracy itself. By the time Healey was ushered into the MoD's briefing room in 2023 he had already been made aware of a series of failings relating to the Afghan evacuation. In September 2021, a month after Kabul fell to the Taliban, he had pressed Wallace, the defence secretary, over a human error that resulted in the personal information of 265 Afghans who had worked alongside British troops being shared with hundreds of others who were on the same email distribution list. Wallace apologised and insisted action had been taken to prevent it from happening again; earlier this year, the Afghans affected were told they would be able to claim up to £4,000 in compensation. • How top military chief's role in Afghan data leak was hidden But by August 2023, Healey had identified a total of four data breaches associated with the Afghan Relocations and Assistance Policy (Arap), the main route for bringing over personnel who had served alongside the UK armed forces. On August 13, he released them to the media in a 'Dossier of Failure'. He would not know until later, but the following day the MoD discovered it had another leak — this time bigger than any before. It was decided three months later that he should be informed. Healey's allies believe this was only because he was continually grilling Tory ministers on problems with the Arap scheme. Healey received one more briefing on the secret Afghan operation in opposition, early in the new year. By the time he entered the MoD as defence secretary in July last year, the scheme had been running for months. But beyond a monthly trickle of Afghan relocations to the UK, little had changed. Healey believed it needed to, and was alarmed not just at what his predecessors had left him to deal with, but the apparent secretive mindset that had set in among civil servants. This complaint has been echoed by a number of senior aides who worked for Sunak in No 10. 'For the scale of catastrophe it was, I was very surprised at the lack of urgency from officials in getting people out [of Afghanistan],' said one. 'There was quite a churn of officials working on it.' Healey began to push for a reassessment of the threat posed by the Taliban to the Afghans on the list — the reason for the superinjunction remaining in place — but even this took months of internal debate within Whitehall to get started. • Who knew about the Afghan data breach — and who was in the dark? At the beginning of this year, Paul Rimmer, a retired deputy chief of defence intelligence, was finally commissioned to lead a review. By June, Rimmer had determined that the leaked document had not spread as widely as feared and that its value to the Taliban, as well as its risk to the Afghans named in it, had diminished sufficiently. Decisions were finally made: only a portion of the Afghans had a legitimate right to come to Britain, many of whom had already arrived. The secret route would end and the MoD would no longer fight to keep the superinjunction in place. Healey's team believe that Tory ministers were genuinely determined to protect the Afghans when they first sought the superinjunction. But as time wore on, they suspect a desire to protect reputations crept into the decision-making process. While Shapps has in recent days expressed 'surprise' that it lasted as long as it did, they point out that last summer he successfully appealed against a decision to lift the superinjunction, right in the middle of the general election campaign. Healey is determined that the culture of cover-ups and the persistent issues with data security — stretching well beyond Afghanistan — are permanently resolved in the MoD. A new chief information officer has been brought in and, in January, new software was introduced on MoD computers to more securely share data. Recently a review of the Afghan data leak was completed to ensure information was being held at the right security classification and in the right location. That no one has been sacked for the scandal has also raised uncomfortable questions about accountability. To this end, Healey's long-term defence reforms will establish clearer chains of command. Under a new military strategic headquarters, the chiefs of the RAF, army and navy will formally report to the chief of defence staff for the first time, with Healey overseeing a department more clearly focused on policy development. Malcolm Chalmers, deputy director of the Royal United Services Institute, is also joining Healey as his strategic director and will be responsible for challenging and reviewing all major decisions. Chalmers is hugely experienced in foreign, defence and security policy: he was previously a visiting professor in the war studies department at King's College London and served as an adviser to Jack Straw when he was foreign secretary. Healey has described him as a 'one-man intellectual powerhouse'. An MoD source said: 'We're continuing to drive the biggest defence reforms in 50 years — that means proper accountability, better transparency for parliament and a stronger internal challenge to the MoD status quo.' And yet, the mistakes keep happening. This weekend, The Sunday Times has revealed how a publication associated with a senior British Army regiment has been routinely disclosing the identities of special forces personnel in its ranks. The MoD was warned about the security breach two months ago, and yet the documents are still online after they initially appeared to have been taken down. Healey has demanded an investigation. In No 10, Starmer's aides are also contemplating their next steps, amid growing calls for a public inquiry. This has not yet been ruled out, although Downing Street believes the defence committee and the ISC should be given space to conduct their own investigations. However, the wider consequences of the Afghan debacle will persist. According to government sources, approximately 24,000 impacted Afghans and their families will come to the UK via all available schemes. Of those, 4,500 Afghans have already arrived or are en route via the ARR and given indefinite leave to remain. This allows them to apply for British residency and, ultimately, citizenship. A further 2,400 have been earmarked for relocation over the coming months, with the total costs associated with the secret route expected to hit £850 million. On average, impacted Afghans have brought eight family members with them — the highest number is reported to have been 22 — placing added pressure on already tight housing stocks and stretched public services. Officials had originally hoped they would bring only their wife and two children. They have each been offered 'transitional accommodation' lasting up to nine months. Many of the Afghans clandestinely flown to the UK were originally put up in disused army barracks, under an operation codenamed 'Lazurite'. In 2023, Weeton Barracks near Blackpool was used to house more than 50 families, although it is unclear whether they were individuals caught up in the leak. Many Afghans were then moved into service accommodation, which is usually set aside for military personnel and their families. At its peak, 12 per cent of military homes were being used, although that has fallen below 2 per cent. The MoD has now decided to end the scheme. Others, however, have been dispersed to various local authorities around the country to be housed, including, in some cases, hotels. The secrecy around the Afghans has made locating them difficult, although Bracknell Forest council in Berkshire, which covers the Royal Military Academy at Sandhurst, said it had received about 320 new Afghan residents alone this year. The sudden influx appears to have created tension with locals. In May, the council was forced to issue an explanatory note saying: 'The council and its partners are aware of some misinformation circulating regarding our new Afghan families. While this misinformation is being circulated by a small number of individuals, we want to make sure all our residents have the facts. We would like to reiterate that our new families are not illegal immigrants, asylum seekers or refugees. They have indefinite leave to remain and so are now UK residents.' A year on from a summer of rioting prompted by the Southport atrocity, there are growing concerns over the national impact on community cohesion — a point also raised in Rimmer's report. No 10 argues the government's response has reduced the possibility of such violence reoccurring, noting that the strategy for announcing the Afghan leak drew heavily on Starmer's response to the Southport riots and the delayed charging of Axel Rudakubana with terror and biological weapons offences. A senior source said: 'We know we are operating in a very low trust environment, which is why we are being as transparent as humanly possible.' A YouGov poll published on Wednesday suggests this approach is working, with 49 per cent of respondents supporting the superinjunction and the need to protect the Afghans, compared with 20 per cent who disapproved. However, the attacks on police officers during violent protests outside an asylum hotel in Epping, Essex, over an unrelated arrest of an asylum seeker on suspicion of alleged sexual assaults in the town, has highlighted how quickly things could escalate again. Luke Tryl, director of the think tank More in Common, said: 'The leak is likely to deepen voters' frustrations about the competence of government and the civil service, confirming their suspicions that they are just not up to the job.' For now, the greatest risk for Starmer is that the Afghan leak entrenches the belief that Britain's political system is broken, regardless of which party is in charge.
The Sun
3 days ago
- Politics
- The Sun
Taliban ‘already murdering Afghans linked to foreign military' days after chilling warning over MoD ‘kill list' leak
THE TALIBAN are reportedly already murdering Afghans linked to foreign militaries - days after a huge MoD data leak. Fears have been growing over the safety of more than 18,000 Afghans whose details were included on the secret list. 3 3 3 A number of named individuals have been assassinated since the leak with one man shot four times in the chest at close range on Monday one of three assassinations in the past week according to the Mail. It comes after the Taliban sent a chilling warning that it will hunt down thousands of Afghan refugees on a "kill list" after the UK's huge data breach. Details of almost 20,000 refugees fleeing the Taliban were leaked after a Royal Marine mistakenly sent a top secret email to the wrong people. Since then panic has been spreading as up to 100,000 could face deadly repercussions from ruthless Taliban rulers who hunt down and kill anyone who helped the UK forces. But sources have insisted it was impossible to prove conclusively whether it was a direct result of the data breach. Afghans were informed on Tuesday that their personal details had been lost including names, phone numbers and their family's details as well as other details that could help the Taliban hunt them down. It is not yet known whether the Taliban is in possession of the database. It includes names of Afghans as well as the names of their individual UK sponsors including SAS and MI6 spies and at least one Royal Marine Major General. One Afghan soldier who fled to Britain in fear of retribution, believes his brother was shot in the street this week because the Taliban believed he was affiliated to the UK. "If or when the Taliban have this list, then killings will increase – and it will be Britain's fault," he said. "There will be many more executions like the one on Monday." He is convinced his sibling was executed because of his own association with Afghan special forces, known as the Triples. He believes that the Taliban sought revenge on his family instead as news of his brother's murder reached him in Britain within an hour of the execution. A day later, Taliban fighters dragged a woman from her home and beat her in the street. A former British military interpreter who witnessed the attack claimed it was because the woman's husband "worked for the West" and is now hiding in Iran. Taliban officials have claimed the details of all the refugees have been known to them since 2022, after they allegedly sourced the information from the internet. A dossier listing more than 300 murders includes those who worked with the UK and some who had applied for the UK's Afghan Relocations and Assistance Policy (ARAP) scheme. This includes senior Afghan intelligence officer, Colonel Shafiq Ahmad Khan, a 61-year-old grandfather who had worked alongside British forces. He was shot in the heart on his doorstep in May 2022. There has been fury this week over the data breach's deadly implications with one angry former interpreter saying: "We risked our lives for the UK standing beside them day after day, now they are risking our lives again." The epic MoD blunder was kept Top Secret for almost three years by a legal super injunction. And the government is still battling the courts to keep details behind the Afghan data leak secret. Thousands of the refugees had to be secretly relocated to the UK and it is set to cost Britain up to £7 billion. A total of 18,714 Afghans were included on the secret list, many of whom arrived via unmarked planes which landed at Stansted airport. Many of the Afghans who were flown into the country as part of Operation Rubific were initially housed at MoD homes or hotels until permanent accommodation was found. Only around 10 to 15 per cent of the individuals on the list would have qualified for relocation under the emergency Afghan Relocation and Assistance Programme, known as ARAP, opened as Kabul fell to the Taliban. But the leak means many more now have a valid claim for assistance and relocation.
The Independent
5 days ago
- Politics
- The Independent
More than 100 British government personnel exposed by Afghan data leak
A catastrophic data leak by a Ministry of Defence official in February 2022 exposed details of tens of thousands of Afghans seeking refuge in the UK due to their links with British forces. The breach also compromised the identities of over 100 British government personnel, including MI6 spies, SAS members, members of parliament, and senior military figures. The leak led to 16,000 affected Afghans being evacuated to Britain, with 8,000 more expected, and was subject to an unprecedented two-year superinjunction preventing publication of details. Defence secretary John Healey confirmed the exposure of British officials' names, while the Intelligence and Security Committee demanded immediate briefings and intelligence assessments regarding the superinjunction. Former armed forces minister James Heappey criticised the Ministry of Defence's "flawed" decision-making on sanctuary applications for Afghan special forces, known as the Triples, whose payments by the UK government were initially denied but later confirmed.
Telegraph
15-07-2025
- Politics
- Telegraph
Revealed: 24,000 Afghans offered asylum in UK after data breach
Britain has offered asylum secretly to nearly 24,000 Afghan soldiers and their families caught up in the most serious data breach in history, it can be revealed. The leak, which can be reported following the lifting of a superinjunction, has pushed the cost of bringing Afghan refugees to Britain to as much as £6 billion, the MoD has admitted, threatening to open up a new black hole in the nation's finances. The revelation is set to overshadow Rachel Reeves's Mansion House speech on Tuesday night, at a time when the Chancellor is already considering raising taxes in the autumn to balance the books. It is not known whether the huge cost to the taxpayer of resettling Afghans has been factored into the Government's budget or whether taxes might have been raised to pay for it, as the secrecy around the data breach has prevented proper scrutiny. The breach occurred in February 2022, when a Royal Marine sent an email to a group of Afghans and accidentally included a spreadsheet containing the identities of 25,000 Afghans who were applying for asylum - soldiers who had worked with the British Army and their family members. It came to light a year later when an anonymous Facebook user posted extracts of the data. The posts were deleted within three days after MoD officials contacted Meta, Facebook's owner, but the Government decided it had no choice but to offer asylum to Afghans affected because they were at risk of reprisal attacks from the Taliban. A number of former Afghan special forces personnel have been murdered by the Taliban since it regained power in Afghanistan in 2021. Some of those who will now come to Britain had asylum applications rejected previously, only for officials to be forced into a reversal. The number expected to be brought to Britain as a result of the breach was initially stated in court documents to be nearly 43,000 people. However, John Healey, the Defence Secretary, will tell Parliament on Tuesday that just 6,900 Afghans will be brought to Britain as a direct result of the breach, under a scheme set up specifically to deal with the fallout. According to the MoD, of these, 4,500 are already in the country or are in transit, and 2,400 more are yet to travel. Officials said that a further 17,000 Afghans deemed eligible to come to Britain under a separate relocation scheme were also found to have been affected by the breach. Of these, 14,000 are already in the country or are in transit, and 3,000 more are yet to travel. In total, it is believed that between 80,000 and 100,000 people were affected by the data breach, the Court of Appeal has said. The Government has fought a two-year legal battle to keep the leak a secret, including securing a superinjunction which has until now prevented this newspaper and other media organisations from not only reporting the data breach, but the very existence of the legal battle. The superinjunction was lifted at midday on Tuesday by the High Court. It is the most serious data breach in British history, dwarfing previous episodes such as the 2013 Snowden leaks detailing GCHQ's secret surveillance methods used against millions of internet users. The database also included the details of British government officials, The Telegraph understands. Both the Speakers of the House of Commons and the House of Lords were informed of the leak in September 2023 'so that they could make informed decisions as to how matters should be handled in Parliament'. MPs have been unable to ask questions about the leak owing to the super injunction. The Afghan soldiers named in the data breach After Britain joined the US-led coalition that invaded Afghanistan in 2001, it trained, equipped and funded military units formed of Afghan volunteers who took part in joint operations to disrupt the country's drug trade by capturing and, where necessary, killing key Taliban figures. The two UK-trained and funded Afghan units - ATF444 and CF333 - that worked alongside the SAS and SBS in some of those secret operations were nicknamed the Triples. By the time of the British withdrawal from Kabul in August 2021, CF333 'was the last formed unit of Afghan soldiers' still loyal to the deposed Western-backed government, according to the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) defence think-tank. Former members of the Triples are among those likely to have been identified in the leaked database. The personnel identified in the data breach are now mostly believed to be safe, according to internal Ministry of Defence assessments. However, there have been several reports of Taliban hitmen murdering Afghans they view as Western collaborators, along with their families. These include former members of the Triples. One murdered Triple member, Riaz Ahmedzai, who was gunned down in Jalalabad in April 2023, although it is not known if he was in the leaked spreadsheet. The leak, the superinjunction and the cost The Royal Marine responsible for the data breach is understood to have accidentally shared the spreadsheet on two occasions in February 2022. The spreadsheet included the names, contact details and personal information of Afghans applying to the Government's Afghan Relocation and Assistance Policy (Arap), which aimed to resettle Afghans who worked with the British and were, along with their families, at risk of Taliban reprisals. It also included information about Afghans who applied to a similar programme called the Afghan Citizens Resettlement Scheme. Sources told the Telegraph that the leaker - who has not been identified - had been instructed to check with trusted Afghans that others applying to Arap had genuinely been part of units that fought alongside British forces. The MoD only became aware of the leak when in August 2023 a member of the public wrote to Luke Pollard, the Labour MP for Plymouth, and James Heappey, a Conservative who was at the time a defence minister, warning them that the spreadsheet had been shared widely online. 'I have a copy of it, so does the Taliban - why doesn't the ARAP team?' wrote the person, whose name was redacted in court documents, in the email dated August 10, 2023. They are understood to be a support worker for Afghans settling in the UK. Extracts from the spreadsheet were posted on Facebook four days later. Officials scrambled into action. Meta was contacted and the posts removed, and a message was sent to around 1,800 people who had applied to Arap warning them of a 'potential data breach of your contact information'. The message said: 'To protect you, do not respond to emails or WhatsApp/text messages from people stating they are from UK Government departments.' Some of those affected told the British Council they had been contacted by Iranian phone numbers on WhatsApp asking them to disclose scans of their passports. By August 2023, journalists had become aware of the leak, prompting the MoD to apply for an emergency superinjunction to prevent any reporting on it. Dozens of court hearings have since taken place, including a referral to the Court of Appeal when Mr Justice Chamberlain, a High Court judge, made an initial attempt to lift the superinjunction last year. The estimated cost to the taxpayer of resettling Afghans - between £5.5 billion and £6 billion - has come from the Treasury reserve. The Government originally set aside £7 billion, MoD lawyers told the High Court, but ministers expect to save around £1.2 billion after closing all Afghan asylum schemes this month. The scheme set up as a result of the leak - the Afghanistan Response Route (ARR) - will be closed on Tuesday. It is understood that the direct costs of the leak to date have been £400 million and that £850 million has been set aside to complete the resettlement of Afghans affected by the data breach. It is not believed that this includes any potential compensation costs. Earlier this month, following a separate data breach connected to Afghans applying for asylum, the MoD agreed to pay £1.6 million to the 265 people affected. The government was also issued with a £350,000 fine. A law firm, Barings, has around 1,000 Afghan ex-soldiers signed up to a mass data breach claim against the MoD in relation to the new leak. That number is likely to increase. Lawyers believe each individual could receive up to £50,000 or more in compensation. Headache for Reeves The huge cost of the resettlement of Afghan refugees is an additional headache for the Chancellor. Economists have warned that the £9.9 billion headroom Ms Reeves has to balance the books has already been wiped out, making tax rises seemingly inevitable, and the Government is also grappling with voter backlash over the cost of housing asylum seekers, which has risen to £4 million a day. It emerged in May that the estimated cost of hotels and other accommodation for asylum seekers had risen from £4.5 billion between 2019 and 2029 to £15.3 billion. It is not known whether any of the rise in cost can be partly explained by the data breach. Labour insiders believe the spiralling asylum bill is fuelling support for Reform, while Sir Keir Starmer has pledged to end the use of hotels to house asylum seekers by 2029. As a result of the data breach, officials secured '1,400 bedspaces' in hotels 'in West Sussex' according to a ministerial briefing document seen by The Telegraph, and similar accommodation in Preston, Aberdeen and Cardiff. Moving a total of 650 Afghans into the Yorkshire and Humber area will cost £18 million, or just under £27,700 per asylum seeker, by the end of 2025, the document also states. Chaos in Afghanistan and the migration crisis When Western militaries pulled out of Afghanistan in August 2021, the Taliban regained control. The Arap scheme was set up to bring Afghans who worked for or with the British Government and were at risk from the regime to safety. A separate scheme called the Afghan Citizens Resettlement Scheme (ACRS) was also set up, for applications from Afghans considered especially vulnerable - such as women and girls - and others who assisted British efforts. When it was set up in 2022, the Conservative government promised ACRS would resettle up to 20,000 people 'over the coming years'. The most recent MoD figures show that the number of Afghans offered asylum, including those affected by the data breach, is 39,200. A further 16,900 are expected to come to the country. It was announced on July 1, without notice, that the Arap scheme was closed to new applicants. The Home Office said the Defence Secretary 'now considers the Arap to have fulfilled its original purpose and can be closed to new principal applications, not least so that defence efforts and resources can be focused where they are most needed - on our nation's security, to combat the acute threats and destabilising behaviour of our adversaries.' A Home Office paper announcing the decision said Arap's closure to new applications was the first step to completing Afghan resettlement, and the Government aims to have 'successfully honoured its obligation' to complete resettlements by the end of this parliament. Applications made under Arap before the closure will still be considered, the Home Office document added. It stated that the Ministry of Defence had a backlog of 22,000 decisions from the scheme. It is believed that the scheme was closed ahead of the lifting of the superinjunction so that there could not be a rush of further applicants once news of the data breach became public. A Home Office source insisted that they did not expect the closure of the scheme to lead to an increase in Afghans trying to reach the UK illegally. They attributed this partly to the fact that a significant number of Afghans are already crossing the Channel in small boats. They were the most common nationality arriving in small boats in the year to March 2025 - 5,800, 16 per cent of small boat arrivals - although this was down from the peak of 9,100 arrivals in 2022. The situation for those Afghans who previously worked alongside the British military and still live in the region is deteriorating. Pakistan, where a large number of Afghans fled when the Taliban re-asserted control over their home country, has been 'steadily hardening its position towards Afghan refugees' since December last year, according to MoD court filings. British diplomats have been trying to stop Afghans being 'forcibly deported' from Pakistan back to Afghanistan. Meanwhile, Iran has sent around 1.2 million Afghan refugees back to their home country, according to United Nations figures released at the end of June, following a pledge in March to deport two million in total. The MoD said that at least two ex-Triples are known to be among that number.
