LONDON: Britain arrange a secret scheme to relocate hundreds of Afghans to the UK after a soldier by chance disclosed the non-public particulars of greater than 33,000 individuals, placing them susceptible to reprisals from the Taliban, court docket paperwork confirmed on Tuesday. A choose at London’s excessive court docket mentioned in a Might 2024 judgment first made public Tuesday that about 20,000 individuals could should be provided relocation to Britain, a transfer that might doubtless price “a number of billion kilos”. Britain’s present defence minister John Healey mentioned that round 4,500 affected individuals “are in Britain or in transit … at a price of round 400 million kilos”. The federal government can be going through lawsuits from these affected by the breach. A ministry of defence-commissioned evaluate of the breach, a abstract of which was additionally revealed Tuesday, mentioned greater than 16,000 affected individuals had been relocated to the UK as of Might this yr. The federal government was compelled to behave after the breach revealed the names of Afghans who had helped British forces in Afghanistan earlier than they withdrew from the nation in chaotic circumstances in 2021. The small print emerged on Tuesday after a authorized ruling often known as a superinjunction was lifted. The injunction had been granted in 2023 after the MoD argued a public disclosure of the breach might put individuals susceptible to extra-judicial killing or critical violence by the Taliban.The dataset contained private info of almost 19,000 Afghans who had utilized to be relocated to Britain and their households. It was launched in error in early 2022, earlier than the MoD noticed the breach in Aug 2023, when a part of the dataset was revealed on Fb. The previous Conservative authorities obtained the injunction the next month. REUTERS
