At the time, just over 17,000 Afghans had already been accepted and sent to the United Kingdom. “”The selected candidates had to be treated and sent by plane, some even clandestinely “says the minister. But the selection was not easy. The British could not rest on a specific list and therefore had to “remain in constant dialogue with those in the country. We had found applications of known sympathizers of the Islamic State and Al Qaeda, as well as people who had been dismissed for collaborating with the Taliban. “
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An error with dramatic consequences
It was then that a Royal Marine, the elite commandos of the Royal Navy, sent two emails to several of his Afghan contacts considered safe, asking them to confirm the name of a handful of people. But, as an attachment of his messages, he provided inadvertently the list of names and telephone numbers of the twenty-five thousand former alleged soldiers of the Afghan army and family members who have applied for asylum in the United Kingdom …
The error will not be spotted before August 10, 2023. That day, a British resident wrote to the deputy for Plymouth Luke Pollard and the Defense Library James Heappey to warn them that he holds the famous list. A sign of his wide broadcast, on August 14, an Afghan having been refused the status of refugee had written on a Facebook group that he had it in his possession and that he intended to make it public. To prove it, he publishes the name and contact details of nine Afghans being there.
Immediately informed, the British Ministry of Defense has set in motion. At his request, the message was erased in the following days by Meta, owner of Facebook. Spies then started to search and erase all traces of the list. But it was probably already too late. According to several Taliban officials interviewed by The Telegraphthey have held the list since its publication on the Internet. And the new power had embarked on the hunt for all the people mentioned.
“My uncle and his family fled in Iran After hearing about the listtestifies an Afghan questioned by the newspaper. Since then, Taliban fighters come regularly to me and to other members of my family to ask for their news. ‘The blood of a spy flows in your veins’, they tell us. “
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Attempted concealment and acceleration of evacuations
At the same time, a British journalist learned the existence of the flight and the list and arrested the government. Minister Ben Wallace then explains that he has asked the justice to prohibit the publication of information on the whole case. “”I do not apologize for having asked for an injunction in court at the time “he said in his Wednesday letter. “”It was not a concealment, as some people try chipped to claim it. I estimated that if this leak was reported at the time, the existence of the list would jeopardize the people we should help. “ Journalists and politicians had strictly prohibited from discussing it.
While the wave of Afghan refugee arrivals had stabilized from December 2022, it will start upwards in the wake of these discoveries. From the following month, everything accelerated. Aware of the danger, the authorities want to safely place all those present on the list and not linked to terrorist organizations. Between September 2023 and March 2025, 12,793 Afghans thus received the status of refugee, even if they had only tenuous link with the British army. A number that should still grow. The government has placed 7 billion euros aside to finance their installation in the United Kingdom.
