Latest news with #kill list
Telegraph
3 days ago
- Politics
- Telegraph
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.'
Daily Mail
3 days ago
- Politics
- Daily Mail
Was government cover-up of Afghan evacuation mission completely pointless? Taliban say they have had full list of 25,000 names all along - and been hunting them for three years
The Taliban claims it has had the so-called 'kill list' of Afghans who worked with Britain since 2022 and has spent the last three years tracking them down. The list includes around 25,000 names of interpreters, soldiers and family members who applied for asylum through British evacuation schemes. It was accidentally leaked online in 2022, triggering one of the most expensive and secretive operations in modern British history - but now critics are asking whether it was all pointless. Taliban officials now say they downloaded the list within days of its appearance online and have used it to hunt those named ever since. A senior Taliban source told The Telegraph, 'We got the list from the internet during the very first days when it was leaked.' The official confirmed that many people fled Afghanistan or went into hiding, but said surveillance teams had been hired to watch homes of the individuals and their relatives around the clock. 'A special unit has been launched to find them and make sure they do not work with Britain,' the official said. He also said authorities in the Taliban government had visited relatives of people on the list to 'track them down' and added that they 'must be dealt with'. Another Taliban official revealed to The Telegraph that the search had ramped up in recent months. He said the list was distributed to border agents, who have been instructed to block anyone listed from leaving the country. He called the people on the list 'traitors' and added that the plan was to find 'as many of them as possible'. He also asserted that the leaked list worked in their favour. The British government responded to the leak by launching Operation Rubific, a covert mission to secretly relocate as many people as possible to safety. Nearly 24,000 Afghans have either already been flown to the UK or will be in the coming months, according to newly released government data. The scale of the operation and the danger it posed to those left behind led to an unprecedented super-injunction being imposed in early 2023. It banned all media, Parliament and the public from discussing the leak, the evacuation plans, or even the fact that a super-injunction existed. Ministers argued that any publicity would further endanger lives by confirming to the Taliban that the leak was real. But a High Court judge who lifted the gag this week said the injunction may have made the situation worse. Mr Justice Chamberlain said there was 'a significant chance that it was in fact endangering' some of the Afghans being relocated. He said the effect on those not brought to the UK was 'likely to be adverse overall.' The judge warned that the government may have 'added more value' to the leak by acting so aggressively to conceal it. A government source confirmed that £7 billion of taxpayer money was spent on Operation Rubific, which has been described by defence officials as the largest covert peacetime relocation effort in British history. According to reporting by The Times, much of the operation was coordinated by MI6, the Ministry of Defence and the Cabinet Office, with emergency teams working for more than two years to process applications, issue visas and arrange flights in secret. Despite these efforts, many Afghans remain trapped. A former British Army interpreter fled to Iran two years ago after hearing his name was on the list, according to the report. His family has since been targeted by Taliban fighters who repeatedly raid their homes. The family member told The Telegraph that they had arrested him and even beaten him for a day. He added that being related to someone on the 'kill list' is a 'death sentence' as the Taliban has threatened they would kill a family member if they can't find who they are searching for. Though the UK government has insisted it acted to save lives, critics argue that the Taliban may have already had access to the data and that the secrecy surrounding the operation may have done more harm than good. Justice Chamberlain concluded in court filings that the decision to suppress public knowledge of the breach may have inadvertently endangered the very people the government claimed it was trying to protect. If Taliban officials are to be believed, the cover-up did little to stop the targeting.
Times
4 days ago
- Politics
- Times
Afghan leak: Judge decries ‘scrutiny vacuum' as he lifts gag order — live
The Ministry of Defence feared that if knowledge of the dataset became public then the Taliban would find it and be able to start working through what one activist described as a 'kill list'. Conservative ministers secured a superinjunction in the High Court on September 1, 2023, which prevented anyone reporting the incident or that a court order even existed. When Labour came to power in July 2024 they continued to argue it should remain in place and it was not until January this year that John Healey, the defence secretary, ordered a review of the policy. Afghans who were on the 'kill list' were not told that their lives may be at risk despite concerns the Taliban could suddenly come into possession of the list. At about 10am on Thursday January 25, 2024, I called a senior member of the Ministry of Defence press office, whom I had known for years, to tell them I was aware of a data leak. It had put lives at risk and it was the subject of a superinjunction, I said. I told him I had known about the matters for some time and wanted to join the court proceedings. I did not realise at the time that everything I said during that initial phone call would be written down and submitted to the High Court. It would form part of a 1,568-page bundle of evidence documenting the longest ever superinjunction and the only to be sought by a government. I had no idea of the magnitude of what I was dealing with. • Read in full: Our defence editor recounts being silenced by government Tens of thousands of Afghans have begun receiving an email from the UK government telling them their data has been breached. In the email, seen by The Times, they are warned their information was sent outside 'secure systems' and may have been 'compromised'. 'We understand this news may be concerning,' it says. The email urges the Afghans to 'exercise caution and not take phone calls or respond to messages or emails from unknown contacts'. It also urges Afghans not to travel to third countries without a valid passport and visa. 'If you do so, you will be putting yourself at risk on the journey, and you may face the risk of being deported back to Afghanistan,' it says. One activist told The Times her phone was 'blowing up' with messages from concerned Afghans. Alarm bells rang in the summer of 2023 when an activist helping Afghans who had served with UK forces during the war reached out to a defence minister. It was 9.57am on Tuesday, August 15. 'Person A', as she later became known in court documents, was panicking. She had become aware of a massive data breach involving tens of thousands of Afghans. What the government did next — and how quickly — was a matter of life and death. • Read in full: MoD evacuates Afghans — without them knowing why Successive governments had tried to stop the public and parliament from knowing about the data breach in the Ministry of Defence, which it had said put up to 100,000 Afghans at risk of torture and death. The Afghans, some of whom had served alongside UK forces during the war, had applied for sanctuary in the UK because of fears they could be targeted by the Taliban. But a database containing their confidential information, including their contact details and names of their family members was sent by a British soldier to Afghans already in the UK who then passed it on to individuals in Afghanistan. One of those who received the dataset threatened to post its contents in a Facebook group 18 months later. The British military is responsible for a data leak that put up to 100,000 Afghans at risk of death — and successive governments have spent years fighting to keep it secret using an unprecedented superinjunction. UK government officials were left exposed when in February 2022 a soldier inadvertently sent a list of tens of thousands of names to Afghans as he tried to help verify applications for sanctuary in Britain. • Read in full: 'Kill list' sent in error leads to £7bn cover-up The longest ever superinjunction and the first to have been secured by the government has been lifted in the High Court after nearly two years and a lengthy legal battle spearheaded by The Times. Mr Justice Chamberlain said the 'long-running and unprecedented' order, which stopped the world from knowing about a data breach concerning Afghans applying to come to Britain, had given rise to 'serious free speech concerns' and had left a 'scrutiny vacuum'. Handing down his judgment at midday on Tuesday, he said the gagging order had the effect of 'completely shutting down the ordinary mechanisms of accountability which operate in a democracy'. The superinjunction was in place for 683 days.
