15-07-2025
Taliban: We had the ‘kill list' all along – and are hunting them down
The Taliban claims the leaked list of Afghans who helped Britain has been in its possession since 2022, and it has been hunting down those named ever since.
The so-called 'kill list' contains the names of 25,000 Afghans who were applying for asylum – soldiers who had worked with the British Army, and their family members.
It became the subject of a legal cover-up after it was leaked in 2022, with successive governments spending billions over two years to secretly relocate thousands of Afghans to the UK to avoid Taliban reprisals.
Now Taliban figures claim to have had the list all along, potentially rendering the secret plot pointless. A senior Taliban official told The Telegraph: 'We got the list from the internet during the very first days when it was leaked.'
The official said many individuals on the list had fled Afghanistan or gone into hiding, but that the Taliban had hired groups to monitor their homes and relatives' houses around the clock.
'A special unit has been launched to find them and make sure they do not work with Britain,' the official added. 'We've been calling and visiting their family members to track them down.
'Senior figures in the establishment in Kandahar are pressuring officials in Kabul to find them. They believe these individuals are still working with the British, and say the problem must be dealt with.'
A second Taliban official told The Telegraph that the hunt for individuals named in the document had intensified in recent months, with names handed over to border forces to stop them from leaving the country.
Many only discovered they were on the list when they tried to cross Taliban-controlled borders.
'The border forces have had the list for the past few months and have orders not to let anyone leave,' the Taliban official said from Kabul. 'These people are seen as traitors, and the plan has been to find as many of them as possible.
'Whoever leaked that file is actually helping us. There may be a general amnesty in place, but spies cannot escape justice.'
The Government has accepted that the court battle could have put the Afghans in even greater danger.
Until Tuesday at noon, an unprecedented super-injunction obtained by the government in 2023 prevented the media, Parliament or anyone else revealing details of a £7 billion scheme to grant asylum to thousands of Afghans, which was instigated as a result of the data breach.
The media was also banned from reporting the fact that the leak had happened.
Ministers obtained the super-injunction – the first ever granted to a British government – on the basis that lives would be at risk if the public, and by extension the Taliban, knew that a list of nearly 25,000 names had briefly appeared online after it was accidentally shared by a Royal Marine in 2022.
The injunction was kept in place for nearly two years despite grave misgivings from a judge about the public being misled.
Mr Justice Chamberlain, the judge who lifted the injunction, said there was 'a significant chance that it was in fact endangering' some of the Afghans being relocated to the UK, and the effect on those who were not being brought to the UK was 'likely to be adverse overall'.
He argued that by going to such lengths to keep the scheme a secret, the government could have 'added more value' to the leaked list in the eyes of the Taliban, who would be aware of people being flown to the UK.
The British government responded to the data breach by launching Operation Rubific, a covert mission to contain the leak and prevent public disclosure of the breach.
About £7 billion of taxpayers' money was allocated to handle the fallout, including what officials called the largest covert peacetime evacuation operation. Nearly 24,000 Afghans affected by the breach have been brought to the UK or will be relocated in the future.
Because of the Taliban's tight restrictions on information in Afghanistan, many people do not know they are on the list.
One of those affected fled to neighbouring Iran nearly two years ago, after the Taliban began searching for him in his home town in western Afghanistan.
A relative told The Telegraph: 'He and his family escaped to Iran after hearing about the list. Since then, Taliban fighters have regularly come to my house and the homes of other relatives, asking about him.'
'They keep pressuring us to reveal his whereabouts. They once arrested me and beat me for a day. My uncle served with the special forces. The Taliban keep saying he must come with them for questioning.
'It's putting everyone in the family at risk – being related to someone on a Taliban kill list is a death sentence. They have all his details – his name, his wife's name, even his children's names.
'We were shocked when they listed them. If they can't find him, they've said they'll kill another family member instead. 'The blood of a spy is in your veins,' they told us.'
The man remains in Iran, but the Islamic Republic is now forcing him – and hundreds of other Afghans – back into Taliban-controlled Afghanistan.
'He has nowhere to go,' the relative said. 'If he's deported, he'll be killed. They have everything on him.'
