At least 100 ex-Afghan special forces still on the run from Taliban death squads
At least 56 Afghan Special Forces commandos have been hunted down, captured and killed by Taliban revenge units since the fall of Kabul, it has been claimed. And a further 102 of the western-trained elite troops remain on the run, often moving from house to house, as they flee a terrible end at the hands of Taliban death squads.
Many of those killed suffered enormously at the hands of their cruel captors who inflicted torture on them for days before executing them and those still free are taunted. It is impossible to know how many are being targeted as a result of the massive MoD data breach in which almost 20,000 files of Afghans wanted to flee were leaked.
It also emerged today that details of as many as 100 UK special forces and MI6 spies were mentioned in a data breach along with almost 20,000 names of Afghans associated with UK forces and diplomatic missions - further escalating the cover-up scandal. Their names were of people who vouched for applicants trying to flee Afghanistan to the UK because they they feared their work with UK forces and civilian or diplomatic missions would cost them their lives once the Taliban found out.
A former British military source, who mentored many of the commandos dubbed 'Triples' because of the name of their special units, told the Daily Mirror: 'The precise number of those captured or executed by the Taliban remains uncertain, though anecdotal evidence suggests the figure is tragically high. Since the fall of Kabul we have lost 56 individuals, predominantly former members of the Triple Unit and the Afghan National Directorate of Security.
'Their deaths, whilst heart-breaking, are not isolated incidents but part of a broader pattern of retribution. I have been closely engaged in these issues and speak regularly with those who remain deeply involved in supporting those still in danger."
The 'Triples' were three Special Forces units called 222, 333 and 444- all of them highly-targeted by the Taliban. The horror facing many remaining Afghan operatives emerged as political figures scrambled to deny they had mismanaged the nightmare 2021 fall of Kabul.
It was worsened with the catastrophic and accidental leak of 18,500 names of Afghans, many military, who needed to flee Afghanistan for the UK. The list of names was accidentally sent out by a UK military official, the Taliban became aware of it and it triggered them to step up the hunt.
Meanwhile thousands of Afghans endangered by the leak have been smuggled to the UK under the Afghan Relocation Route system set up when the leak emerged. The Mirror source revealed how many fleeing Afghan Special Forces and members of other western-trained units were ghosted to safety from Kabul as the capital fell in 2021.
Their 'Triple' units were codenamed 'CRU 222' or Crisis Response Unit 222 - a counter-terror fighting unit supported by the British special forces, 'CF 333 - or Commando Force 333, counter-terror and targeting of top Taliban 'high value targets supported by the US Green Berets, and ATF 444 - the Afghan Territorial Force 444 whose role was to do all of the above but in Helmand and Kandahar Provices.
They were called "the Triples" because they used three numbers in their title. There were plans underway to expans the "Triples" special forces with five or six more units dubbed 555, 666, 777, 888, 999 but the fall of Kabul stopped that in its tracks.
As the Taliban death units closed in on them they were were helped to the Panjshir Valley, where they were looked after by the National Resistance Front. Others crossed into Pakistan, Turkmenistan or Uzbekistan, but many remain stranded in Afghanistan.
The Mirror source added: 'The danger they face is ongoing. Death threats are routinely delivered by phone to family members and many who were captured were subjected to prolonged torture before execution, some murdered outright without warning or process.
'The cruelty has been systematic and calculated and continues to this day with the personnel we speak with when safe to do so.' In 2021 a scheme to relocate Afghans who helped the British military during the war was launched and called the Afghan Relocations and Assistance Policy (ARAP).
But in February 2022 an unnamed British official accidentally emailed details of 18,714 Afghans who applied to be relocated to the UK. He had thought he was emailing 150 rows of information, but it actually contained around 33,000.
Roughly a year later the MoD discovered the breach and also in 2023 officials realise the Taliban may have obtained a 'kill list of thousands.' Then defence secretary Ben Wallace applied for a court order after the MoD reeived two inquiries about the breach from journalists.
And soon after a High Court granted a super-injunction gagging order until a hearing scheduled for 1 December, preventing the reporting of the breach.
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Daily Mirror
23 minutes ago
- Daily Mirror
Top Tory Grant Shapps claims Afghan data breach kept secret over risk of executions
In his first comments since news of an unprecedented superinjunction was made public, the ex-Defence Secretary Grant Shapps said his focus was on 'sorting out the mess and saving lives' Senior Tory Grant Shaps has defended the decision to keep MPs and the public in the dark over a massive Afghan data leak - claiming it risked people being executed. In his first comments since news of an unprecedented superinjunction was released, the ex-Defence Secretary said his focus was on "sorting out the mess and saving lives". Mr Shapps insisted he would "do the same thing all over again", adding he would "walk over hot coals" in order to stop people being murdered. Details of almost 19,000 people seeking to flee from the Taliban after the fall of Kabul were released in 2022 in error by a Ministry of Defence (MOD) official. It led to a secret £850million relocation scheme being set up to bring people to safety. Yesterday it emerged that as many as 100 UK special forces and MI6 spies were also mentioned in the massive data breach along with almost 20,000 names of Afghans. Labour's Defence Secretary John Healey offered in the Commons on Tuesday a 'sincere apology' to all of those Afghans whose lives were put in jeopardy. Mr Shapps, who was in post while a superinjunction was imposed on the incident, suggested he believed it should remain in place because he thought there was a risk of those named being murdered if it did not. The injunction was sought by Mr Shapps' predecessor, Ben Wallace, and a superinjunction was instead put in place by a judge when Mr Shapps took over the brief. "It is the case that I thought that once the superinjunction was in place, it should remain as a superinjunction," he said. Mr Shapps told BBC Radio 4's Today programme: "The problem with this list and all of the uncertainty surrounding it, and one of the reasons why I haven't come out in the initial couple days of this to speak about it was that obviously, with the new information that's now been released about the fact that there were British Special Forces and secret services on that list, it seemed to me that if there was any doubt at all, that erring on the side of extreme caution, a superinjunction meant that that was entirely justified." He added: "And I'll tell you what, anybody sat behind the desk that I was sat in as Defence Secretary and faced with the choice of whether that list would get out and people would be pursued, murdered and executed as a result of it. "Or doing something to try and save those lives, I'd much rather now be in this interview explaining why a superinjunction was required, than being in this interview explaining why I failed to act and people were murdered." Told Parliament was not able to scrutinise the decision - including MPs on the Intelligence and Security Committee (ISC)- Mr Shapps said the risks were "incredibly high". He added: "In the end the number one priority is to make sure we protected lives and people weren't murdered. It was a pretty stark decision to make." But the chairman of the ISC said on Friday there are "serious constitutional issues" raised by the Afghan data leak. Lord Beamish said the ISC was not informed of the breach, despite the names of more than 100 Britons being divulged - including spies and SAS operators. He said: "You've got to understand how our committee got its powers in the first place. "The Justice and Security Act 2013 introduced closed hearings into court for intelligence cases - the quid pro quo for that was to give the ISC the power to reassure, to be able to see the information legally, to reassure the public and Parliament that there was public scrutiny of the security services. "Someone in government chose just to ignore that and go down the legal route, so I think there are serious constitutional issues here." Earlier this week Keir Starmer said former Tory ministers had "serious questions to answer about how this was ever allowed to happen".
Telegraph
23 minutes ago
- Telegraph
Human rights lawyers are overplaying their hand
Lawyers are planning to use human rights laws to force the UK to accept thousands of Afghans and pay for their settlement after the personal details of up to 100,000 people were inadvertently leaked by a British soldier, arguing that the data leak leaves these people vulnerable to reprisals by the ruling Taliban government. It's hard to think of a more inflammatory push at a time when the strength of the connections between many of the Afghans and the UK Armed Forces is being questioned – with MoD insiders saying that for every genuine claimant on the list, up to 16 could be bogus. But lawyers, nevertheless, intend to argue that anyone on the list could qualify for relocation to the UK – even if they have no connection to Britain and their claim for resettlement is spurious at best. It is true that the UK will not have genuine national sovereignty over matters of immigration and asylum unless it re-evaluates its relationship with the ECHR and the 1951 Refugee Convention. These are outdated conventions which came into effect in the 1950s, which have not been modernised to keep pace with the growing ease of international movement and transformative technological change. The democratically-elected government of the UK should not be at the mercy of a Strasbourg-based supranational court – especially when it comes to determining immigration and asylum policy on the grounds of national security, social cohesion, and public order. It is a major transparency deficit which lies at the heart of a struggling democracy where immigration is a leading concern among the British public. The grounding of the Rwanda flights under the last Tory government by a ruling made by the European Court of Human Rights, demonstrated that we cannot be a truly democratic nation-state whilst being a member of it. But to suggest that withdrawing from the ECHR and the 1951 Refugee Convention would be some sort of magic bullet and automatically shore up our national borders is wide of the mark. What is required is a radical overhaul of the Human Rights Act (which currently requires UK judges to interpret domestic legislation and make rulings which are compatible and consistent with the provisions of the ECHR) and judicial review (the process where the policy actions of the government are subject to review by the judiciary). And of course, all this needs to be backed by significant amounts of political willpower – the kind that simply does not exist among the British political establishment, which includes far too many MPs who are more respectful of their own legal background than the mainstream preferences of the British electorate on matters of border security and public safety. While I supported the UK's withdrawal from the European Union following the June 2016 referendum on the UK's membership, it is vital that we resist the tendency to externalise blame for the UK's problems on international institutions based outside of it. Our domestic human-rights architecture is not fit for purpose and it is clear as day that an uncomfortable number of UK judges tend to rule in favour of prioritising the rights of foreign nationals over the security of British citizens. And perhaps most crucially of all, the political rise of lawyers such as the current Prime Minister – empty suits ultimately shaped by international conventions – has meant little to no genuine action has taken place when it comes to immigration and asylum policy. While much of the focus is understandably on a supranational foreign court which all too often overreaches, many of the UK's problems with immigration and asylum are connected to institutions, laws, and processes at home.
Western Telegraph
32 minutes ago
- Western Telegraph
Shapps: ‘We saved lives with gagging order on Afghan data leak'
The former defence secretary said lifting the superinjunction, which was imposed while he was in post, may have endangered the lives of those whose personal information was released 'in error' in February 2022. The details of more than 100 Britons, including those working as spies and in special forces, were included in the massive data breach that resulted in thousands of Afghans being secretly relocated to the UK. Defence sources have said information relating to personnel was included in the spreadsheet after they had endorsed Afghans who had applied to be brought to the country. Sir Grant had remained silent on the role he played in the aftermath as several Tory ex-ministers sought to distance themselves from the handling of the breach in recent days. But speaking to BBC Radio 4's Today programme on Friday, the ex-MP for Welwyn Hatfield said his focus had been on 'sorting out the mess and saving lives'. An injunction over the breach was sought by Sir Grant's predecessor Sir Ben Wallace, and a wider-ranging superinjunction, which prohibits disclosure not just of the information but of the order itself, was granted when Sir Grant was in office. 'The judge himself decided it should be a superinjunction,' he said. 'And it is the case that I thought that once the superinjunction was in place, it should remain as a superinjunction.' This was to err 'on the side of extreme caution,' he said, adding: 'I'd much rather now be in this interview explaining why a superinjunction was required, than being in this interview explaining why I failed to act and people were murdered.' The former minister said: 'I would do the same thing all over again. I would walk over hot coals to save those lives.' Asked whether he supported calls from the Intelligence and Security Committee (ISC) for the publication of an intelligence assessment which formed the basis of the superinjunction, he said: 'Yes, I would.' He added that he knew the committee 'won't like' the fact that the incident had been kept secret but 'it was just so sensitive that if anything had got out at all, it would put those lives at risk.' Despite having kept the order in place during his tenure as defence secretary, which lasted just under a year, Sir Grant said he was 'surprised' it had remained for 'so long.' 'I don't think it should have carried on as long as it had. I'm surprised that it has. Those questions are for others,' he said. 'But I came in, the problem was there, I dealt with it, and as a result I think that we saved lives.' Lord Beamish said the ISC was not informed of the breach, despite the names of more than 100 Britons being divulged – including spies and SAS operators. 'You've got to understand how our committee got its powers in the first place,' he said. Meanwhile, the chairman of the ISC said the previous government had ignored the usual process whereby the committee is able to see the information to ensure there was scrutiny and 'go down the legal route'. 'I think there are serious constitutional issues here,' Lord Beamish told BBC Radio Scotland. The initial breach saw a dataset of 18,714 people who applied for the Afghan Relocations and Assistance Policy (Arap) scheme released by an official who emailed a file outside authorised government systems. Defence sources have said that details of MI6 spies, SAS and special forces personnel were included in the spreadsheet, after they had endorsed Afghans who had applied to be brought to the UK. The Ministry of Defence became aware of the blunder only when excerpts from the dataset were posted anonymously on a Facebook group in August 2023, and a superinjunction was granted at the High Court in an attempt to prevent the Taliban from finding out about the leak. The leak also led to the creation of the secret Afghanistan Response Route, which is understood to have cost about £400 million so far, with a projected final cost of about £850 million. A total of about 6,900 people are expected to be relocated by the end of the scheme. Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch apologised on behalf of her party (Stefan Rousseau/PA) The official responsible for the email error was moved to a new role but not sacked. The superinjunction was in place for almost two years, covering Labour and Conservative governments. Tory leader Kemi Badenoch has apologised on behalf of the Conservatives for the leak, telling LBC: 'On behalf of the government and on behalf of the British people, yes, because somebody made a terrible mistake and names were put out there … and we are sorry for that.' Former immigration minister Robert Jenrick said he and former home secretary Suella Braverman had 'strongly opposed' plans for the Afghan Response Route in 'internal meetings'. But former armed forces minister James Heappey, himself an ex-Army officer who served in Afghanistan, said ministerial colleagues offered no 'fierce opposition' to the relocation scheme. Mr Heappey also said claims he had backed a 'new entitlement' for people affected by the breach but not eligible for other schemes were 'untrue'. Ms Braverman has said there is 'much more that needs to be said about the conduct of the MoD (Ministry of Defence), both ministers and officials'. Former veterans minister Johnny Mercer claimed he had 'receipts' regarding the previous government's actions in relation to Kabul, and has described the handling of the breach as 'farcical'. Sir Ben has said he makes 'no apology' for applying for the initial injunction because the decision was motivated by the need to protect people in Afghanistan whose safety was at risk.
