Personal details of UK special forces and spies were included in Afghan data breach

Special forces’ identities are tightly kept secretspublished at 16:05 British Summer Time

16:05 BSTBreaking

Joel Gunter
Reporting from the High Court

The security breach
was kept under wraps by an injunction until today, when the gagging order
was lifted in part by a High Court judge.

Details of more than 100 British officials were included in
the leaked data, which may have fallen into the hands of the Taliban.

The identities of
members of the UK’s special forces regiments, including the SAS and SBS, and
the identities of people working in the security services are tightly kept
secrets.

The breach occurred
in February 2022, when a database was accidentally emailed outside of
government by an individual working at UK Special Forces headquarters in
London.

The database also
contained the personal information of
nearly 19,000 Afghans who had
worked with the British during the 20-year conflict in Afghanistan and had
applied to be resettled to the UK after the Taliban retook control in 2021.

Many of those who had applied were judged to be at risk of
serious harm or even death as the Taliban sought revenge against those who had
worked with the British government during the war.