The personal details of serving and former members of UK special forces, and the security services, were included in the Afghan data breach, it can now be reporte.The details of more than 100 British people - including spies and special forces - were included in a massive data leak that resulted in thousands of Afghans being secretly relocated to the UK.
In total, these details were released in February 2022, alongside thousands of Afghans' details
The breach happened when a British official leaked a spreadsheet by mistake - it was later subject to a super-injunction, meaning no details could be reported. Here's a timeline of key events
We've just heard from former commander of UK and Nato forces Hamish De Bretton-Gordon, who says the latest breach revelation shows "just how important" the super-injunction was.
The Ministry of Defence will have to make sure the damage is limited, he adds, and have very tight security measures in the future.
"We are in an era now when the keyboard is as dangerous - if not more dangerous - than weapons of war," he adds.
The Liberal Democrats have called for an inquiry after the news that personal details of UK special forces and spies were included in the Afghan data breach.
MP Helen Maguire - a former military captain - says "the more we find out about this data leak, the worse it gets".
She says special forces' confidential details "should never have been somewhere where they could accidentally be shared".
"Both Afghans at risk for their brave work supporting the British operation - and the UK operatives who facilitated it - were put in immense danger thanks to the incompetence of the MOD under the Conservatives," she adds.
As a result, Maguire calls on the government to "immediately launch an inquiry" into the "devastating scandal".
As we've reported, most of the people affected by the February 2022 data leak - which was first revealed earlier this week - were Afghans.
Asif [not his real name], 27, worked for more than three years in the "Triples" - Afghan special forces trained by the British Army in Afghanistan. The Triples used to participate in joint operations with British Army against the Taliban across the county
Asif was brought to the UK six weeks ago from Islamabad - he was told to move to Pakistan to be evacuated, and waited for three months there.
But it was only in the past week he was told his details were in the data breach.
"I was notified two days ago and received an email from MoD about the data breach," he says. "I was not told about the breach when I was in Afghanistan."
Asif adds: "I have more fears about family - particularly about my three brothers who live in Afghanistan. I really wish nothing happens to them since they were not part of any military operation with me.
"I proud that I have served my country, I don’t regret it, but I am disappointed by the data breach. I have many colleagues fought with us shoulder to shoulder but they left in Afghanistan."
We revealed last night that the Ministry of Defence offered to expedite a review of one Afghan’s resettlement application after he obtained the leaked dataset and posted part of it on Facebook
The BBC understands that the man had previously been rejected for resettlement, but was brought to the UK after posting names from the data on Facebook and indicating that he could release the rest.
Government sources with knowledge of the events told the BBC that the individual "essentially blackmailed" the government into bringing him to the UK.
The BBC understands the man did not face any criminal charges in relation to use of the leaked data.
The Ministry of Defence declined to comment about the individual’s specific case, but told the BBC that "anyone who comes to the UK under any Afghan relocation schemes" must go through "robust security checks in order to gain entry".
For a case officer in the Secret Intelligence Service (MI6), having your name and details outed in public is potentially a career-killer.
For serving and former members of the highly secretive Special Air Service (SAS) and Special Boat Service (SBS) such leaks can in theory expose them to the risk of threat to life, given the operations some will have taken part in that involved the deaths or capture of individuals.
The revelation today that 100 or more names and details of British operatives were included in this unauthorised data breach is certainly shocking. But the leak was - belatedly - discovered in August 2023.
That has given the UK Intelligence and SF Communities nearly two years to come up with ways to mitigate this disaster. Among the worse case scenarios they will have had to consider is that Russia, China and Iran may also now be in possession of those leaked names.
But for now, those who have most to fear are the 600 former Afghan government soldiers and their estimated 1,800 relatives who are still in Afghanistan.
Whatever routes out that were being suggested to them will have now been compromised and the publicity surrounding this whole story will have re-energised some within the Taliban to hunt down those on the list and exact what they perceive as rightful revenge.
Very little was said in court today that the public was allowed to hear – but what was said paved the way for the dramatic revelation that current and former members of the UK’s special forces and security services were compromised by this leak.
The judge, Mr Justice Chamberlain, told the court that the barristers for the Ministry of Defence and for a group of media organisations had reached a compromise in a closed-door hearing.
That meant that the media organisations involved in the case – including The Mail, Global Media and the Independent – could now report that sensitive British officials were in the leak.
That revelation had been prevented by an injunction issued earlier this week, but then Defence Secretary John Healey said in Parliament on Tuesday that a "small number" of senior military officials, MPs and other government officials had been affected.
Then on Wednesday the Sun newspaper reported that special forces and spies were involved. It was enough to push the group of media organisations in this case to request an emergency hearing and ask the judge to lift the restrictions on them.
It was already a huge scandal earlier this week, when the country learned that the details of thousands of Afghans at risk from the Taliban had been accidentally leaked by someone in UK Special Forces headquarters, and a secret scheme had been set up to bring them to the UK.
Today we can report that the data breach was much worse than previously thought: it contained personal details of more than 100 British officials including those whose identities are most closely guarded – special forces and spies.
In the light of today’s revelations, it is no wonder that the British government obtained an unprecedented super-injunction, a kind of gagging order that prevents the reporting of even the existence of the injunction.
Taken together, the leak of the personal information of both at-risk Afghans and some of the most sensitive officials in the UK make this one of the worst security breaches in modern British history.
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.