Shocking MoD data breach put 100,000 lives in danger

More than 16,000 Afghans have been secretly brought to the UK after being put at risk of reprisals by the Taliban – while a further 8,000 are still to be relocated. Holly Bancroft reports

- Holly Bancroft

A huge Ministry of Defence data breach put the lives of up to 100,000 Afghans at risk and prompted thousands of them to be evacuated to Britain under a covert £7bn scheme - then was kept secret for almost two years by an unprecedented superinjunction, it can now be revealed.

The leak, in February 2022, exposed the details of thousands of Afghans who said they were in danger from the Taliban because of their links to UK forces and now wanted to escape to Britain. The blunder triggered a top secret government operation, codenamed Operation Rubific, which involved 16,000 Afghans being brought to the UK as part of Britain’s largest covert peacetime evacuation, with some 8,000 still to come.

The whole operation was kept secret from MPs and the public, with ministers even deciding to hide the true reason for the evacuation from parliament.

The extraordinary case can only now be revealed after a court battle lasting almost two years, in which national media – including The Independent – fought for the lifting of the superinjunction, a court order so strict that even mentioning its existence was forbidden.

Lifting the superinjunction yesterday, High Court judge Mr Justice Chamberlain called for further investigation after an official review into the data leak “fundamentally undermined the evidential basis” on which the superinjunction had been based.

As the catastrophic breach is finally made public, it can be revealed that:

• The government was prepared to evacuate more than 42,000 people affected by the data leak at an estimated cost of £7bn

• At least 17 people mentioned in the dataset are believed to have been killed by the Taliban, 14 of these after the leak occurred