16-07-2025
Faces of the Afghans murdered by Taliban since ‘kill list' leak
More than 200 Afghan soldiers and police murdered by the Taliban since a so-called 'kill list' was leaked by the Ministry of Defence have been named in a dossier.
Their names were compiled by independent caseworkers highlighting the plight of Afghans who worked with British and US forces.
But a court order imposed by a senior judge prevents The Telegraph from reporting whether the dead had first appeared on the Ministry of Defence (MoD) list accidentally made public in February 2022.
The Taliban claims the MoD list came into its possession in 2022 and that it has been hunting down those identified in it ever since.
The Telegraph can disclose that a unit of the Taliban's special forces – known as Yarmok 60 – has been assigned to locate them.
The list recorded applicants to an asylum scheme run by the MoD that was intended, following the fall of Kabul in 2021, to give sanctuary to Afghans who had worked with British troops.
It remains unclear how many of those on the list were subsequently identified by the Taliban, tracked down and murdered as a consequence.
John Healey, the Defence Secretary, admitted on Wednesday that he was 'unable to say for sure' whether anyone had been killed as a result of the data breach.
But he insisted that three years on from the leak, it was 'highly unlikely' that being on the list would now increase the risk of being targeted by the Taliban.
A super-injunction was lifted by the High Court on Tuesday, allowing the leak to be reported for the first time.
But a court order remains in place that prevents using the database to reveal the identities of Afghans who may have been targeted as a result.
Assassinated special forces
Among the former Afghan special forces soldiers who have been killed by the Taliban since the list was leaked are young and middle-aged men who were assassinated by the new regime in different parts of the country and some with their family members.
Col Toorjan, a police commander in southern Helmand, was killed with several family members when he was leaving a mosque on June 24 last year. One month later, Taliban forces shot and killed another former government army officer in the eastern Khost province.
The Taliban executed Hamidullah Khosti on July 23 in the Alishar district. He had arrived there the previous day to attend a wedding ceremony.
Despite a general amnesty declared by Hibatullah Akhundzada, the Taliban supreme leader, the group has continued to arrest and kill former government military personnel and employees for nearly four years.
Another former government army officer was shot and killed by Taliban forces in Kapisa province in July 2022, five months after the list was leaked. Muzamil Nejrabi was killed at night in Arbab Khil village in the Nejrab district of Kapisa province.
The young man had left his home at 10.30pm to irrigate his agricultural fields when he was shot by soldiers from the Taliban's Fifth Battalion, First Brigade stationed in Kapisa. He died on the way to the hospital.
Friends of Muzamil said he was a newly-wed, married three months before his assassination.
In February last year, the bloody corpse of Hayatullah Nizami, former operations commander of the third security zone in northern Taloqan city, was discovered in the Bishkapa area near the Taliban army brigade of the city in Takhar province.
According to a local source, Nizami, who was previously a member of the security forces, had been working as an employee at a company which collaborates with the Taloqan municipality, following the fall of the Western-backed government.
He disappeared with his vehicle the night before and his dismembered body was found the following day.
Local sources reported that after the body was discovered, the Taliban named him as Hamidullah, a municipality employee, in order to conceal his military background.
On August 21 last year, Taliban fighters dragged Abdul Rahman Delawar, the former security commander of Shekhel district, from his home and killed him, according to local media.
Mr Delawar had fled to Iran following the fall of Kabul and had recently returned to his ancestral village where he was living a normal life.
Sabaoon Omar, another former national police officer, was killed by the Taliban in October 2022.
His killing added to a growing number of reported executions of former government security personnel by Taliban forces, despite the group's declared general amnesty for former officials.
The dossier of 200 Afghans killed since the leak was put together by the independent caseworker – known only as Person A – who first raised the alarm over the data breach.
She sent an email to James Heappey, the armed forces minister at the time, in which she warned 'how severe the negligence has been in terms of data security'.
She added: 'The Taliban may well now have a 33,000-long kill list – essentially provided to them by the UK Government.'
She sent the email on Aug 15 2023, after an anonymous user on Facebook threatened to publish the leaked data.
It had been accidentally released 18 months earlier by a British soldier tasked with vetting Afghans seeking asylum under the Afghan Relocations and Assistance Policy (Arap).
Person A was subsequently subject to the super-injunction in September 2023, which prevented her – along with newspapers – from even mentioning its existence.
The dossier compiled by Person A and other caseworkers was passed to The Telegraph after the super-injunction was lifted, to serve as a snapshot of Afghans who worked with coalition troops and who it is believed have subsequently been targeted by the Taliban.
The identities of those killed were gleaned from posts in local Afghan press and on social media as well as through contacts on the ground.
The Telegraph has been unable to verify independently the names contained in the dossier of those killed and the circumstances in which they died.
Person A said that Afghans may have applied to the Arap scheme – even if they had not worked with British troops – as a means to securing a safe haven.
But it also means Afghans who had no association with the UK military may have been put in danger simply by applying to the Arap scheme.
Person A said: 'The issue we have is we have no way of knowing whether the people in our dossier had applied for the Arap scheme or not. There are an awful lot of people who didn't comply with Arap but applied through Arap.'
