Latest news with #Royal Marine
The Sun
3 days ago
- Politics
- The Sun
Taliban ‘already murdering Afghans linked to foreign military' days after chilling warning over MoD ‘kill list' leak
THE TALIBAN are reportedly already murdering Afghans linked to foreign militaries - days after a huge MoD data leak. Fears have been growing over the safety of more than 18,000 Afghans whose details were included on the secret list. 3 3 3 A number of named individuals have been assassinated since the leak with one man shot four times in the chest at close range on Monday one of three assassinations in the past week according to the Mail. It comes after the Taliban sent a chilling warning that it will hunt down thousands of Afghan refugees on a "kill list" after the UK's huge data breach. Details of almost 20,000 refugees fleeing the Taliban were leaked after a Royal Marine mistakenly sent a top secret email to the wrong people. Since then panic has been spreading as up to 100,000 could face deadly repercussions from ruthless Taliban rulers who hunt down and kill anyone who helped the UK forces. But sources have insisted it was impossible to prove conclusively whether it was a direct result of the data breach. Afghans were informed on Tuesday that their personal details had been lost including names, phone numbers and their family's details as well as other details that could help the Taliban hunt them down. It is not yet known whether the Taliban is in possession of the database. It includes names of Afghans as well as the names of their individual UK sponsors including SAS and MI6 spies and at least one Royal Marine Major General. One Afghan soldier who fled to Britain in fear of retribution, believes his brother was shot in the street this week because the Taliban believed he was affiliated to the UK. "If or when the Taliban have this list, then killings will increase – and it will be Britain's fault," he said. "There will be many more executions like the one on Monday." He is convinced his sibling was executed because of his own association with Afghan special forces, known as the Triples. He believes that the Taliban sought revenge on his family instead as news of his brother's murder reached him in Britain within an hour of the execution. A day later, Taliban fighters dragged a woman from her home and beat her in the street. A former British military interpreter who witnessed the attack claimed it was because the woman's husband "worked for the West" and is now hiding in Iran. Taliban officials have claimed the details of all the refugees have been known to them since 2022, after they allegedly sourced the information from the internet. A dossier listing more than 300 murders includes those who worked with the UK and some who had applied for the UK's Afghan Relocations and Assistance Policy (ARAP) scheme. This includes senior Afghan intelligence officer, Colonel Shafiq Ahmad Khan, a 61-year-old grandfather who had worked alongside British forces. He was shot in the heart on his doorstep in May 2022. There has been fury this week over the data breach's deadly implications with one angry former interpreter saying: "We risked our lives for the UK standing beside them day after day, now they are risking our lives again." The epic MoD blunder was kept Top Secret for almost three years by a legal super injunction. And the government is still battling the courts to keep details behind the Afghan data leak secret. Thousands of the refugees had to be secretly relocated to the UK and it is set to cost Britain up to £7 billion. A total of 18,714 Afghans were included on the secret list, many of whom arrived via unmarked planes which landed at Stansted airport. Many of the Afghans who were flown into the country as part of Operation Rubific were initially housed at MoD homes or hotels until permanent accommodation was found. Only around 10 to 15 per cent of the individuals on the list would have qualified for relocation under the emergency Afghan Relocation and Assistance Programme, known as ARAP, opened as Kabul fell to the Taliban. But the leak means many more now have a valid claim for assistance and relocation.
Telegraph
4 days ago
- Politics
- Telegraph
Vast majority of Afghans on ‘kill list' were bogus asylum seekers
As few as one in 16 Afghans identified in a data breach had genuine claims for asylum, defence sources have said, raising fresh questions about how many bogus claimants might have slipped through the net. More than 100,000 people were trying to get to Britain in 2022 on the grounds that they had fought alongside or helped British forces, or were related to someone who had, before the Allied withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021. Multiple sources have told The Telegraph that the 'vast majority' of them had no right to come to the UK because they had no connection to the Armed Forces. The disclosure that the Ministry of Defence (MoD) believed that only a tiny proportion of those claiming asylum were genuine helps to explain why the Home Office raised concerns on national security grounds about the scheme to bring them to the UK. A Royal Marine was trying to sift out false claimants when he emailed a list of almost 19,000 names to what he thought were trusted contacts, only for it to fall into the wrong hands. It was this that led to the government being granted a super-injunction to prevent the media or MPs from discussing the data breach. It also prevented any reporting of an emergency airlift to the UK of some of the people named on the list. The Government says that to date, 6,900 people, comprising 1,500 people who were on the leaked list plus dependants, have been brought to the UK. But the High Court was told in a previously secret hearing relating to the injunction that the true figure was 16,156, and that 42,000 people in total were eligible to be brought to the UK.
Telegraph
6 days ago
- Politics
- Telegraph
The most expensive email in history
No email sent in error could ever have been so expensive – or dangerous. A Royal Marine had inadvertently – and, as it would turn out, catastrophically – circulated an email that included a spreadsheet containing the details of 25,000 Afghans, including their family members, who had helped British troops during the war with the Taliban. The email was sent by the soldier, in charge of vetting asylum seekers, to a group of Afghan contacts in the UK that he trusted. He worked out of Special Forces headquarters at Regent's Park Barracks, in central London, under the command of Gen Sir Gwyn Jenkins, the newly appointed First Sea Lord, who led UK Special Forces in Afghanistan. The Royal Marine responsible is understood to have accidentally shared the spreadsheet on two occasions in February 2022. It is not known if he has faced any sanction for the leak. His contacts, in turn, would send the names on to fellow Afghans still in Afghanistan to ensure Britain was only relocating families with a genuine right to resettle in the UK. Sources told The Telegraph that the Royal Marine – who has not been identified – had been instructed to check with trusted Afghans that others applying for the Afghan Relocations and Assistance Policy (Arap) had been part of units that fought alongside British forces. But in sending not just a few names but the whole spreadsheet, thousands of lives were put at risk. The cost of clearing up the mess would be estimated by the government at £7 billion. When journalists, including those at The Telegraph, inquired about the data breach, they were slapped with a super-injunction. By court order, The Telegraph, along with a handful of other news outlets, was prevented from disclosing any details about the error – or even the existence of the injunction itself. At the time the email was sent, the Government was scrambling to make good on a promise to give sanctuary to Afghans, including soldiers and interpreters, who had fought alongside British troops following the invasion in 2001 up until the fall of Kabul to the Taliban in August 2021. The tens of thousands of names on the database were of Afghans who had applied for asylum in the UK under the specially convened Arap scheme. It also included information about Afghans who applied to a similar programme called the Afghan Citizens Resettlement Scheme (ACRS). Their very act of applying for asylum had put their lives in jeopardy. For 18 months, the Ministry of Defence appeared oblivious to the existence of the rogue email, with its spreadsheet sent in error. That all changed on Aug 14 2023, with an anonymous post on Facebook that would send the MoD into a spiral of panic. The MoD only became aware of the leak when that month a member of the public wrote to Luke Pollard, the Labour MP for Plymouth, and James Heappey, a Conservative who was at the time a defence minister, warning them that the spreadsheet had been shared widely online. 'I have a copy of it, so does the Taliban – why doesn't the Arap team?' wrote the person, whose name was redacted in court documents, in the email dated Aug 10 2023. They are understood to be a support worker for Afghans settling in the UK. Extracts from the spreadsheet were then posted on Facebook four days later. In a group used by 1,300 Afghans needing to relocate, some of whom may have been Taliban infiltrators, the user – known only as 'Anonymous Member' – wrote that he was in possession of the database containing records of 25,000 applicants on 33,000 rows of information, adding: 'I want to disclose it.' The user who posted the extracts is understood to have been an Afghan who was sent the database, and whose own asylum claim was later rejected. To show the list was genuine, the Facebook user then posted the personal details of nine Afghans who had applied to the Arap scheme. British diplomatic staff administering the scheme in Pakistan were alerted by another member of the Facebook group; alarm bells began to ring. Spies scramble to delete list By the afternoon of Aug 14, the relocation team in Islamabad had circulated an email to some 1,800 Afghans in Pakistan, warning them: 'We have been informed there may have been a potential data breach of your contact information.' Some of those affected told the British Council they had been contacted by Iranian phone numbers on WhatsApp asking them to disclose scans of their passports. However, Whitehall officials chose not to inform any individuals waiting in Afghanistan or elsewhere about the breach, because it was felt it would increase the risk of the Taliban getting hold of it. Spies, meanwhile, sought to delete any trace of the list from servers overseas. The posts were deleted within three days after officials from the MoD contacted Meta, Facebook's owner. The Metropolitan Police was informed in August 2023, but it was decided a criminal investigation was not necessary. It is understood that individuals in the UK and Pakistan are still in possession of the database, and in at least one case it has changed hands for a large sum of money, understood to be five figures. By 10am on Aug 15, an email was sent to Mr Heappey, the armed forces minister at the time, with the alarming subject title: 'ARAP families, imminent threat to life.' The sender of the email – whose name has been redacted in court documents – explained that they were now aware of the data breach. 'The fact that the Taliban may be in possession of 33,000 Arap applications, including the primary applicants' phone numbers and all the case evidence, is simply bone chilling,' claimed the email. It is unclear what, if any, was Mr Heappey's response. Or indeed if he saw the email. By 8.09pm, at a time when the MoD's top brass would have gone home for the day, a senior official in charge of data governance circulated an official crisis alert to them, confirming the data breach. But it wasn't clear at that stage how the database had got into rogue hands. The question, an unnerving one for the Government, was whether this could have been an illegal hack. The intelligence services, including GCHQ and MI6, were briefed by the Foreign Office and asked to examine whether a hostile state could have been responsible. The CIA was also brought into the loop. Days later, officials realised the stark truth of the accidental leak. From then on, the Government went into crisis mode. Freelance journalist David Williams, who had previously worked with the Daily Mail on a campaign to resettle Afghan interpreters, was made aware of the breach. He contacted the MoD for comment, and other journalists soon got wind of it. D-Notice issued The Government decided that any whiff of the spreadsheet could put lives in danger, and the MoD issued a so-called D-Notice requesting that newspapers refrain from reporting the breach. D-Notices are advisory only and not legally binding. Meanwhile, inside the government, ministers were in a race against time to get to Afghans identified on the spreadsheet before the Taliban could. Ben Wallace, the defence secretary at the time, who had already announced in July his intention to resign, was incandescent. He had been concerned about data safety and could not believe that such a lackadaisical breach could have been allowed to occur. A Cobra meeting was convened in Whitehall in response. Present, according to reports, was Sir Gwyn, the head of Special Forces at the time, and the most senior soldier present. According to reports, one minister asked Sir Gwyn if he or Admiral Sir Tony Radakin, the chief of the defence staff, should resign. Sir Gwyn, according to reports, responded: 'Certainly not.' On Aug 25 2023, in one of his last acts as defence secretary, Wallace applied to the High Court for an injunction to prevent the leak becoming public. A week later, on Sept 1 – by which time Grant Shapps had been installed as his successor – the High Court granted a super-injunction 'contra mundum', meaning 'against the world', that prevented anybody knowing about the leak and the existence of the injunction itself. It was the first time such a draconian injunction had been used by a UK government against the British press. When The Telegraph inquired about the breach late last year, our journalists were slapped with the same order. By now, the government was running two operations. One was to stop the story getting out, and the other was to get the Afghans out of their home country and to the safety of the UK. Ministers launched Operation Rubific that would aim to bring thousands of Afghan families most at risk to the UK, largely via Pakistan. In towns up and down the country, Afghans were quietly resettled and their numbers kept off the official books, after being flown into the UK on specially arranged flights. Mr Justice Robin Knowles, the High Court judge who granted the super-injunction, accepted his ruling would infringe 'freedom of expression and of the press,' but insisted that 'the impact is justified in the particular and exceptional circumstances of this case including the risk to life and of torture'. Instead of being granted against a named individual, or news organisation, the injunction banned anybody at all who learnt of the leak from talking about it. Parliament kept in the dark With news reporting banned, Parliament was kept in the dark – although the Speakers of both the Lords and Commons, Lord McFall and Sir Lindsay Hoyle respectively – were secretly told so they could decide how to handle any Parliamentary questions to ministers about it. John Healey, then the shadow defence secretary, tabled just such a question on Dec 13 2023. In that month, the Information Commissioner had fined the MoD £350,000 for leaking the details of more than 200 Arap applicants. Mr Healey asked if the watchdog was investigating any similar breaches. A brief answer from Mr Heappey said there were two 'live investigations', confirming the Labour member's suspicions. The Telegraph understands that Mr Heappey then met his Labour counterpart that month to reveal all to him. Yet Mr Healey was also served with the super-injunction at the meeting – meaning he could not even tell Sir Keir Starmer, the leader of the opposition at the time, let alone the shadow chancellor. The intelligence and security committee and the Commons defence select committee were both kept in the dark. 'I would not widen [the] circle by briefing others,' said Shapps in a civil service memo dated November 2023. The chairman of the public inquiry into alleged extrajudicial killings of Afghans by members of the SAS was also kept in the dark. Democratic accountability had seemingly been thwarted. Thanks to the court order, the MP could ask no further public questions about the leak, nor question ministers' and officials' handling of it in deciding to bring all the directly-affected Afghans to the UK. At the time, sources suggested, the MoD's estimate of the total cost of bringing Afghans to Britain was in the region of £4 billion. It would rise to £7 billion, before being revised down to £6 billion, an extraordinary sum all the same. By May 2024, a Cabinet sub-committee chaired by the deputy prime minister – at the time, Oliver Dowden – had decided to allow 11,500 Afghans into Britain as a result of the leak, yet this had not been announced to Parliament nor subjected to any public scrutiny. The money to do so was drawn from the Treasury's reserve funds and not the MoD, Home Office or Department for Communities and Local Government's budgets, The Telegraph understands. At about the same time, Mr Justice Chamberlain, who had taken over the legal case, ruled the injunction ought to be lifted, prompting an immediate appeal by the MoD. Court of Appeal judges agreed with the government and said the gag order had to remain in place. Meanwhile, July's general election saw a change of government. Initially, Labour kept things exactly as they were under their Tory predecessors, with MoD lawyers continuing to insist to the High Court that any public mention of the leak would be lethally disastrous. Mr Healey, by now Defence Secretary, continued to toe the MoD line and stay silent on the breach. The injunction would remain in place for another year after Labour took charge. Officials and politicians continued to maintain that any public knowledge of the breach would somehow inspire the Taliban to go look for the spreadsheet. Yet by January this year, a retired civil servant, Paul Rimmer, the former deputy head of Defence Intelligence, had been commissioned to review the risks. By April, The Telegraph understands, ministers were aware that he was likely to find that if the data breach became public knowledge, it would not substantially increase the risks to those mentioned in it. In his review, Mr Rimmer concluded that 'early concern about the extent of the Taliban intent to target [certain individuals] has diminished. There is little evidence of intent by the Taliban to conduct a campaign of retribution… Killings are undoubtedly still occurring, and human rights violations remain extensive, but it is extremely difficult to determine the causes of individual killings or detentions.' The system set up to fly in Afghans, without any public knowledge of the scheme as a result of the data breach, was now 'disproportionate to the actual impact of the data loss were it to fall into the Taliban's hands '. By the time of the review, 16,156 individuals affected by the breach in 2022 had reached the safety of the UK. But it is only now that The Telegraph and other newspapers can tell that story. An Afghan man now living in Britain is said to be the person who threatened to share the list. According to the Daily Mail, he is in the UK with at least seven relatives.
The Sun
7 days ago
- Politics
- The Sun
MoD in massive £7bn data breach after bungling Royal Marine accidentally sent secret email to wrong people
A FAT-FINGERED Royal Marine who sent a secret email to the wrong people is set to cost the government up to £7bn. The email contained the details of 20,000 Afghans who were desperate to flee the Taliban after helping British forces between 2001 and 2021. The list also included names of their individual UK sponsors including SAS and MI6 spies and at least one Royal Marine Major General. The clumsy click has potential to be the most expensive data breach in history. It put countless lives at risk as Afghanistan's ruthless Taliban rulers tried to hunt and kill anyone who had helped UK forces. A number of named individuals have been killed since the leak. Others were tortured and beaten. But sources insited it was impossible to prove conclusively whether it was a direct result of the data breach. The epic MoD blunder was kept Top Secret for almost three years by a legal super injunction but can finally be made public today. And the MoD only wrote to those affected to warn them today. A source said: 'The MoD kept this secret and denied these people the chance to change their numbers, emails, locations or take any measures to protect themselves.' The Sun understands that a serving member of UK Special Forces, who was originally a Royal Marine, accidentally emailed the database to a group of applicants who were named on the list. An MoD source said it was 'human error and not a cyber hack or hostile state actor'. I lived with Taliban for year secretly filming bloodthirsty terrorists' horror secrets… then orders were sent to kill me One of the individuals later published the database online when his application was turned down. Critics also accused the MoD of hiding the leak from the British public in bid to conceal the potential costs. Defence Secretary John Healey is expected to say the cost of relocating the Afghans and their families will cost £400 million. It includes £100 million in compensation for the data breach and £300 million to relocate them to Britain. But government sources have estimated that the lifetime cost of supporting the 20,000 individuals and their families could hit £7bn. Lawyer Adnan Malik, who represented around 1,000 victims, blasted the MoD for 'careless handling of sensitive information' which he warned had put lives at risk. Mr Malik, from the Manchester based law firm Barings Law, added: 'This is an incredibly serious data breach, which the Ministry of Defence has repeatedly tried to hide from the British public.' He added: 'A total of around 20,000 individuals have been affected, putting them and their loved ones at serious risk of violence from opponents and armed groups. 'Through its careless handling of such sensitive information, the Ministry of Defence has put multiple lives at risk, damaged its own reputation, and put the success of future operations in jeopardy by eroding trust in its data security measures.' He accused the MoD of using a High Court injunction to try and keep the breach a 'national secret' in order to 'hide the failings of the MoD'. Only around 10 to 15 per cent of the individuals on the list would have qualified for relocation under the emergency Afghan Relocation and Assistance Programme, known as ARAP, opened as Kabul fell to the Taliban. But the leak means many more now have a valid claim for assistance and relocation. The list included Afghans who worked hand-in-glove with Britain's special forces and intelligence services, as well as those who performed more menial tasks including such as cleaners on bases and embassies. Mr added: 'Our claimants continue to live with the fear of reprisal against them and their families, when they should have been met with gratitude and discretion for their service. 'We would expect substantial financial payments for each claimant in any future legal action. "While this will not fully undo the harm they have been exposed to, it will enable them to move forward and rebuild their lives.'
