Afghanistan Times
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KABUL – A senior Taliban official has claimed that the group has possessed the leaked list of Afghans who supported British forces since it first appeared online in 2022 and has been actively tracking down those named. The official said a special unit had been launched to locate individuals deemed to still have ties to Britain, and that border forces were using the list to prevent them from leaving the country. This comes after the lifting of a rare and sweeping UK superinjunction that had, until now, blocked all reporting on the Ministry of Defence (MoD) data breach. The breach, which occurred in February 2022, exposed the personal details of nearly 19,000 applicants to the UK’s Afghan Relocations and Assistance Policy (ARAP), including former soldiers and interpreters.
Defence Secretary John Healey admitted on Wednesday that he was “unable to say for sure” whether anyone had been killed as a result but insisted it was “highly unlikely” that being on the list now increased individuals’ risk. The UK government launched a secretive £850 million resettlement scheme in 2024 to relocate those affected, eventually flying around 6,900 Afghans to Britain. However, the MoD has acknowledged that hundreds of those exposed in the leak remain inside Afghanistan. The superinjunction, described as “constitutionally unprecedented,” was lifted this week, revealing not only the scale of the breach but also that senior UK officials had known about it for over a year without informing Parliament. Affected individuals have been urged to exercise caution online. While the official responsible is no longer in the same role, it remains unclear whether disciplinary action was taken.
