Afghan soldiers abandoned due to poor MoD decisions

Defective decision-making resulted in hundreds of Afghan special forces who served with the British being wrongly rejected for sanctuary and abandoned to the Taliban, High Court judges have found.

- HOLLY BANCROFT SOCIAL AFFAIRS CORRESPONDENT

Afghan commandos who served alongside the UK special forces (UKSF) in Afghanistan were left behind after the Taliban takeover in 2021 and received a blanket rejection from the Ministry of Defence (MoD) in respect of their applications to resettle in the UK. The Afghans are known as the Triples because of the names of their units, Commando Force 333 and Afghan Territorial Force 444.

Thousands of applications are being reviewed after the government acknowledged failures in how these were processed. Now the High Court has found that there were numerous defects in the way the cases were handled. High Court judges have also ordered that the defence secretary John Healey publish a “transparent and accurate statement” about the scope of the MoD review of cases.

The review was announced after a joint investigation by The Independent, Sky News and Lighthouse Reports revealed that Triples commandos had been denied help and left to face torture and death. In a judgment published yesterday, Lord Justice Dingemans and Ms Justice Farbey found that MoD caseworkers had failed to properly interpret the criteria required for UK resettlement – leading to the wrongful rejection of applications.