Unprecedented superinjunction helped keep Afghan data breach secret for three years

A serious data breach that put the lives of thousands of Afghans who worked with the UK Armed Forces at risk was kept secret from the public for three years under a superinjunction.

MPs who served alongside Afghans during the war in the country have criticised the handling of the incident and the danger it posed to those who assisted the UK military.

The blunder saw a dataset containing the personal information of nearly 19,000 people who applied for the Afghan Relocations and Assistance Policy (Arap) emailed outside of a secure government system in February 2022.

• Healey apologises after superinjunction is lifted, revealing how Afghans' details were leaked
• Charity backing Afghan interpreters 'surprised' that resettlement schemes shutting down
• Afghan resettlement schemes are too slow, says cross-party human rights group

An anonymous Facebook user posted some of the details on the social media site in August 2023, prompting a civilian assisting Arap applicants to contact then-Armed Forces Minister James Heappey, warning him of the danger.

He said: "The Taliban may well now have a 33,000-long kill list – essentially provided to them by the UK government.

"If any of these families are murdered, the government will be liable."

Two media outlets contacted the Ministry of Defence the same month about the breach and agreed not to publish anything until protective measures could be implemented.

Facebook's parent company Meta also informed the MOD that the post containing the details had been removed due to "risk of physical harm".

The MOD applied for an injunction the following month, and an unprecedented superinjunction, "made against the world", was imposed by Judge Mr Justice Robin Knowles until the beginning of December 2023, which prevented the press from reporting the breach and politicians from discussing it.

It was extended several times despite several legal challenges and was only lifted in July 2025 following the closure of the Afghanistan Response Route that was set up in December to relocate 200 people and their dependents, who were at the highest risk following the data breach and who were not eligible under Arap.

Defence Secretary John Healey has offered a "sincere apology" in the Commons, telling MPs: "This serious data incident should never have happened."

Labour's Louise Jones – who served as an Army intelligence officer during the Afghanistan War, criticised the "chaotic mismanagement" of the withdrawal.

She said: "I was appalled to watch the chaotic mismanagement following the fall of Kabul, that left Afghans that had served alongside our troops and those who had worked so hard for a better Afghan dangerously exposed.

"This was a situation that I feared would happen, and I could see coming even when I served in Afghanistan in 2017.

"The fact is the previous government had plenty of warning that this situation could happen and failed to plan properly for it."

Mr Healey said: "It was the voices of members on both sides of the House here, speaking up, recognising the debt this country owes to many of those who worked alongside or served with our forces that made the very difficult job that our forces undertook in Afghanistan possible in the first place."

Conservative MP Lincoln Jopp, who led the Scots Guards in 2010 in Afghanistan, said two Afghans he had worked alongside had been resettled in Britain. He asked the Defence Secretary what position the person who had mistakenly leaked the information held.

Mr Healey replied: "The challenge I faced, the challenge this Government faced, was far bigger than the actions of one official that long ago."

Tory MP James Cartlidge, who was a defence minister in August 2023 when the breach became known, also offered his apology.

He said: "I had relatively little direct involvement.

"That said, the Secretary of State has issued an apology on behalf of the Government and I join him in that and in recognising that this data leak should never have happened."