Latest news with #legalclaim
Telegraph
15-07-2025
- Politics
- Telegraph
Taxpayer could face £1bn compensation bill for Afghan leak victims
Afghans secretly relocated to the UK after a data breach are suing the Government in a compensation case that threatens to cost taxpayers almost £1 billion. A vast data breach involving the details of 18,800 soldiers, along with about 6,000 of their family members, was revealed on Tuesday after a superinjunction was lifted by the High Court, allowing The Telegraph and other national newspapers to expose the scandal. It can now be revealed that a law firm is suing the Ministry of Defence (MoD) on behalf of at least 1,000 Afghans who claim they were affected by the breach. Manchester-based Barings Law hopes to claim £50,000 from the MoD for each individual involved in the breach, sources have said. If all 18,800 soldiers make a successful claim, the compensation bill could be as high as £940 million. That sum could grow if any of the Afghan soldiers' family members join the legal claim, taking it towards £1 billion in total. Hidden from the public The breach occurred in February 2022, when a Royal Marine emailed a group of Afghans, accidentally including a spreadsheet containing the identities of nearly 25,000 Afghans – soldiers who had worked with the British Army, as well as their family members – who were applying for asylum. The leak came to light in 2023, when an anonymous Facebook user posted extracts of the data on the social media site. MoD officials contacted Meta, the company that owns Facebook, and the posts were deleted within three days. However, the Government decided it had no choice but to offer asylum to the Afghans affected because the leak had left them at risk of reprisal attacks from the Taliban. The breach has only just come to public attention after an unprecedented superinjunction was lifted by the High Court. Adnan Malik, head of data protection at Barings Law, said: 'This is an incredibly serious data breach, which the Ministry of Defence has repeatedly tried to hide from the British public. 'It involved the loss of personal and identifying information about Afghan nationals who have helped British forces to defeat terrorism and support security and stability in the region. '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.' To date, the leak is understood to have cost £400 million to relocate victims of the leak. A further £850 million has been set aside to complete the resettlement of those affected, but it is not believed that this includes any potential compensation costs. The MoD was fined £350,000 for a very similar – but separate – data breach in 2023 that came to public light. The details of 265 Afghans were accidentally leaked two years before, in 2021, after an email was sent copying in a list of addresses in the 'to' field of the message rather than the 'bcc' field, which hides other recipients. Regulators from the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) handed down the penalty in December 2023. Court papers seen by The Telegraph indicate that the ICO was made aware of the far larger Afghan data breach in 2023, but were sworn to secrecy.
Yahoo
14-07-2025
- Sport
- Yahoo
Defender Tuanzebe sues former club Man Utd
Former Manchester United defender Axel Tuanzebe is suing the club for alleged negligent medical advice. The 27-year-old, who joined Burnley earlier this month, filed a legal claim with the High Court against United last week. Advertisement It relates to a period from July 2022 involving an unknown injury and is considered a high value claim, which is understood to be more than £1m. Tuanzebe was out for 195 days in his final season at the club before he was loaned to Stoke in January 2023, where he made just five appearances. He joined the club when he was eight, making his debut in 2017, and played 37 times for them before leaving in the summer of 2023, joining Ipswich as a free agent that September. The right-back captained United at every level and his final appearance for the club was in the 2021 Europa League final loss to Villarreal, where he scored in the shootout as they lost 11-10 on penalties. Advertisement The former England Under-21 international - who now represents DR Congo - also had three spells on loan at Aston Villa, while he also spent time at Napoli in 2022. Tuanzebe's lawyers, Simons Muirhead Burton, and United both declined to comment when approached by BBC Sport.
BBC News
14-07-2025
- Sport
- BBC News
Defender Tuanzebe sues former club Man Utd
Former Manchester United defender Axel Tuanzebe is suing the club for alleged negligent medical advice. The 27-year-old, who joined Burnley earlier this month, filed a legal claim with the High Court against United last relates to a period from July 2022 involving an unknown injury and is considered a high value claim, which is understood to be more than £1m. Tuanzebe was out for 195 days in his final season at the club before he was loaned to Stoke in January 2023, where he made just five appearances. He joined the club when he was eight, making his debut in 2017, and played 37 times for them before leaving in the summer of 2023, joining Ipswich as a free agent that September. The right-back captained United at every level and his final appearance for the club was in the 2021 Europa League final loss to Villarreal, where he scored in the shootout as they lost 11-10 on penalties. The former England Under-21 international - who now represents DR Congo - also had three spells on loan at Aston Villa, while he also spent time at Napoli in 2022. Tuanzebe's lawyers, Simons Muirhead Burton, and United both declined to comment when approached by BBC Sport.
The Sun
11-07-2025
- Entertainment
- The Sun
Prince Harry's lawyers must produce documents on alleged payments to witnesses in latest legal claim
PRINCE Harry's lawyers must produce documents on alleged payments to witnesses in his latest legal claim, a judge says. Harry and six others — including actress Liz Hurley, Sir Elton John and his husband David Furnish — are suing Daily Mail publisher Associated Newspapers Limited. In May, ANL's lawyers asked the High Court to let them see documents 'that relate to payments, royalties or inducements'. Yesterday Mr Justice Nicklin ruled paperwork must be handed over. He said: "I am satisfied that documents held by the claimants that can support a case that a witness has been paid or offered other inducement for their evidence, whether directly or indirectly, should be disclosed. "That is because there is a real prospect that Associated will be able to rely upon this evidence to attack the credibility of such witnesses. "Ultimately, the issue of whether the payment or inducement does affect the credibility of any witness is a matter to be resolved at trial." ANL denies its accusers' claims that it hired private investigators to tap phones and even carry out burglaries. It previously described the claims as "lurid" and "simply preposterous". A trial is expected to start in January and last for nine weeks. 1
Al Jazeera
10-07-2025
- Politics
- Al Jazeera
Mahmoud Khalil files $20m claim against Trump for wrongful detention
Mahmoud Khalil, a former student activist imprisoned for more than three months, has filed a wrongful detention claim against the administration of President Donald Trump, seeking $20m in damages. Thursday's court filings allege that the Trump administration smeared his reputation, maliciously prosecuted Khalil and unlawfully imprisoned him. The claim names the United States Department of Homeland Security, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and the Department of State as defendants. In an interview with The Associated Press (AP), Khalil said he hopes his claim will show that the Trump administration cannot bully activists into silence. 'They are abusing their power because they think they are untouchable,' Khalil said. 'Unless they feel there is some sort of accountability, it will continue to go unchecked.' Thursday's claim is likely to be the precursor to a full-fledged lawsuit under the Federal Tort Claims Act. Khalil, who served as a spokesperson for the pro-Palestinian protests at Columbia University, said he plans to use any money he receives from his claim to help other activists whose speech Trump has attempted to suppress. He also told the AP he would accept an apology and a revision of the Trump administration's deportation policies. Khalil himself continues to face deportation proceedings as a result of his activism. What happened? Born to Palestinian parents in Damascus, Syria, Khalil was a face for the Palestinian solidarity movement in the US after the start of Israel's war on Gaza in October 2023. United Nations experts and human rights groups have warned that Israel's tactics in Gaza are 'consistent with genocide', and Columbia University became the epicentre for global, student-led protests. 'I'm one of the lucky ones who are able to advocate for the rights of Palestinians, the folks who are getting killed back in Palestine,' Khalil told Al Jazeera in May 2024. But Trump campaigned for a second term on pledges to crack down on immigration to the US and stamp out the antiwar protests, which he described as anti-Semitic. Upon taking office in January, Trump issued executive orders setting the stage for the removal of foreign nationals deemed to have 'hostile attitudes' towards the US or who were accused of supporting 'threats to our national security'. One of the orders instructed federal authorities to take 'actions to remove such aliens' from the US. 'To all the resident aliens who joined in the pro-jihadist protests, we put you on notice: come 2025, we will find you, and we will deport you,' Trump wrote at the time. 'I will also quickly cancel the student visas of all Hamas sympathizers on college campuses, which have been infested with radicalism like never before.' Khalil was the first major arrest in Trump's crackdown on the student protesters. Video shot by his pregnant wife, Noor Abdalla, on March 8 shows plain-clothed immigration officers handcuffing Khalil and leading him out of his university apartment complex in New York City. He was swiftly moved from New York to New Jersey and then to Louisiana, where he was held at the LaSalle Detention Center in Jena ahead of his planned deportation. Inside the legal proceedings Lawyers for Khalil, however, swiftly filed two challenges: one against his deportation and one against his detention, in what is called a habeas corpus petition. Because of the swift and clandestine nature of his departure to Louisiana, Khalil's lawyers have said they did not know where their client was in the initial days after his arrest. Khalil is a permanent US resident, and his wife a citizen. To justify his deportation, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio invoked a rarely used provision in the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952. That provision allows the secretary of state to remove any foreign nationals he believes to have 'potentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences for the United States'. Khalil has not been charged with any crime. The US, however, is a close ally of Israel and has provided military support to its campaign in Gaza, which has killed at least 57,762 people. On March 9, shortly after Khalil's arrest, the Department of Homeland Security also issued a statement accusing Khalil of anti-Semitism, citing Trump's executive orders. 'Khalil led activities aligned to Hamas, a designated terrorist organization,' the statement said. 'ICE and the Department of State are committed to enforcing President Trump's executive orders and to protecting US national security.' Trump himself called Khalil a 'Radical Foreign Pro-Hamas Student' and a 'terrorist sympathizer'. 'This is the first arrest of many to come,' the president wrote on social media. 'We know there are more students at Columbia and other Universities across the Country who have engaged in pro-terrorist, anti-Semitic, anti-American activity.' But Khalil and his legal team have accused the Trump administration of violating his constitutional rights to free speech. Since Khalil's arrest, other foreign students have been arrested too, including Mohsen Mahdawi and Rumeysa Ozturk, who was reportedly imprisoned for writing an opinion article in her student newspaper against Israel's war. On June 20, a judge in New Jersey ordered Khalil's release. He missed the birth of his first child while incarcerated.
