Britain arrange a secret scheme to relocate hundreds of Afghans to the U.Okay. after a soldier by chance disclosed the private particulars of greater than 33,000 folks, placing them vulnerable to reprisals from the Taliban, court docket documents confirmed on Tuesday (July 15, 2025).
A choose at London’s High Court stated in a May 2024 judgment first made public on Tuesday (July 15, 2025) that about 20,000 folks might have to be provided relocation to Britain, a transfer that will seemingly price “several billion pounds”.
Britain’s present Defence Minister John Healey stated that round 4,500 affected folks “are in Britain or in transit … at a cost of around 400 million pounds”.
The authorities can also be going through lawsuits from these affected by the breach, additional including to the final word price of the incident.
A Ministry of Defence-commissioned evaluation of the data breach, a abstract of which was additionally printed on Tuesday (July 15, 2025), stated greater than 16,000 folks affected by it had been relocated to the U.Okay. as of May this yr.
The British authorities was compelled to act after the breach revealed the names of Afghans who had helped British forces in Afghanistan earlier than they withdrew from the nation in chaotic circumstances in 2021.
The particulars emerged on Tuesday (July 15, 2025) after a authorized ruling generally known as a superinjunction was lifted. The injunction had been granted in 2023 after the MoD argued {that a} public disclosure of the breach may put folks vulnerable to extra-judicial killing or severe violence by the Taliban.
The dataset contained private info of practically 19,000 Afghans who had utilized to be relocated to Britain and their households.
It was launched in error in early 2022, earlier than the MoD noticed the breach in August 2023, when a part of the dataset was printed on Facebook.
The former Conservative authorities obtained the injunction the next month.
Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s centre-left authorities, which was elected final July, launched a evaluation into the injunction, the breach and the relocation scheme, which discovered that though Afghanistan stays harmful, there was little proof of intent by the Taliban to conduct a marketing campaign of retribution.
