LONDON, UK – The identities of over 100 British officials, including members of the UK special forces and MI6, were compromised in a significant data breach that also put thousands of Afghans at risk of reprisal. The full extent of the fallout from the breach was kept secret by a “super-injunction” until Thursday, July 17, 2025, when a High Court judge partially lifted the order, allowing media organisations to report on the compromise of secret personal data belonging to special forces and spies.
On Tuesday, the government had already admitted that the data of nearly 19,000 Afghans who had worked with the British during the 20-year conflict in Afghanistan and applied to resettle in the UK had been inadvertently leaked. Many of these individuals were deemed to be at risk of serious harm or death from Taliban retribution. This critical security risk was a primary reason for the extensive gagging order, which even prevented the reporting of its own existence.
The data breach initially occurred in February 2022 but was not discovered by the government until August 2023, when someone in Afghanistan who had obtained the data posted a portion of it on Facebook, threatening to release more. The BBC revealed on Wednesday that the Ministry of Defence (MoD) subsequently offered to expedite a review of this individual’s application and facilitated their relocation to the UK – a sequence of events government sources described as “essentially blackmail.” The MoD declined to comment on the individual’s actions but stressed that “anyone who comes to the UK under any Afghan relocation schemes” undergoes “robust security checks.”
The discovery of the breach in 2023 prompted the government to covertly establish the Afghanistan Response Route (ARR), a resettlement scheme for those affected. Crucially, individuals were not informed about the breach despite the significant risk to their security. The scheme has since facilitated the relocation of 4,500 Afghans and their family members to the UK, with a further 2,400 people expected, at an estimated cost of £850 million.
The accidental leak resulted from an individual working at UK Special Forces headquarters in London inadvertently emailing over 30,000 resettlement applications to someone outside of government, believing they were sending data for only 150 people.
Defence Secretary John Healey told Parliament on Tuesday that the breach was a “serious departmental error” and acknowledged it was “just one of many data losses” related to the Afghan relocation schemes. James Cartlidge, the shadow defence secretary, apologised on behalf of the former Conservative government, which was in power when the leak was discovered.
While the MoD has refused to disclose how many people in Afghanistan may have been harmed, the Taliban government claimed on Thursday that it had not arrested or monitored Afghans affected by the leak. However, relatives of Afghans named in the leak told the BBC they fear for their family members still in the country, with one reporting an intensification of Taliban efforts to locate their named relative following the leak.
An MoD spokesperson reiterated the longstanding policy of not commenting on special forces, adding, “We take the security of our personnel very seriously, particularly of those in sensitive positions, and always have appropriate measures in place to protect their security.”
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