Taliban denies arresting Afghans after UK data leak

The Taliban government said on Thursday it had neither arrested nor monitored Afghans involved in a secret British resettlement plan after a data breach was revealed this week.

Thousands of Afghans who had worked with the UK were brought to Britain with their families in a secret programme after a 2022 data breach put their lives at risk, the British government revealed on Tuesday.

The scheme was revealed only after the UK High Court lifted a superinjunction order banning any reports of the events.

UK Defence Minister John Healey said the leak was not revealed because of the risk that the Taliban authorities would obtain the data set and the lives of Afghans would be put at risk.

"Nobody has been arrested for their past actions, nobody has been killed and nobody is being monitored for that," the Afghan government's deputy spokesman Hamdullah Fitrat said.

"Reports of investigation and monitoring of a few people whose data has been leaked are false."

After the Taliban swept back to power in Kabul in 2021, their Supreme Leader Hibatullah Akhundzada announced an amnesty for Afghans who worked for Nato forces or the ousted foreign-backed government during the two-decade conflict.

"All their information and documents are present here in the Defence Ministry, Interior Ministry and Intelligence," Mr Fitrat added. "We don't need to use the leaked documents from Britain."

He said "rumours" were being spread to create fear among Afghans and their families. The breach resulted in the creation of a secret Afghan relocation scheme – the Afghanistan Response Route – by the previous government in April 2024.

Between 80,000 and 100,000 people, including an estimated number of family members of the Afghan Relocations and Assistance Policy (Arap) scheme applicants, were affected by the breach and could be at risk of harassment, torture or death if the Taliban obtained their data, UK judges said in June 2024

The scheme is understood to have cost about £400 million so far, with an estimated cost, once completed, of £850 million.

Millions more are expected to be paid in legal costs and compensation. About 4,500 people, made up of 900 Arap applicants and an estimated 3,600 family members, have been brought to the UK or are in transit through the Afghanistan Response Route.

They are among some 36,000 Afghans who have been accepted by Britain under various schemes since the August 2021 fall of Kabul.

Tens of thousands of Afghans fled Afghanistan in a chaotic weeks-long evacuation when the Taliban insurgency was successful, after the mass withdrawal of international troops and air support to the country.

Tens of thousands more have been resettled under European and US asylum schemes, which after four years have now declined to a virtual halt.

The UN Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (Unama) said in 2023 there were credible reports of serious human rights violations by the Taliban authorities against hundreds of former government officials and ex-armed forces members.

From the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan on August 15, 2021 to June 30, 2023, Unama documented at least 800 instances of extrajudicial killing, arbitrary arrest and detention, torture and ill-treatment and enforced disappearance, it said in a report.

The Taliban's Foreign Ministry has denied the allegations and said all former employees had been pardoned.

The Taliban government has imposed a severe interpretation of Islamic law, under which women and girls are banned from most education and jobs.

Former Conservative UK ministers have sought to defend their record after Prime Minister Keir Starmer said members of the previous government had “serious questions to answer” about the Afghan data leak that resulted in an unprecedented superinjunction.

Former immigration minister Robert Jenrick said he first learnt of the data breach, in which a defence official release details of almost 19,000 people seeking to flee Afghanistan, after a legal gagging order had been imposed.

Former veterans minister Johnny Mercer claimed he had “receipts” regarding the former Conservative administration’s actions in relation to Kabul but said it was “absurd” to accuse him of failing grasp the scale of crisis.

“I know who is covering their tracks and who has the courage to be honest,” he said. “I would caution those who might attempt to rewrite history.”

Former prime minister Liz Truss, who was foreign secretary at the time of the breach in February 2022, but a backbencher when the superinjunction was sought, said she was shocked by the “cover-up”.

She said the revelations indicated a “huge betrayal of public trust” and “those responsible in both governments and the bureaucracy need to be held to account”.