Thousands of bogus asylum seekers managed to "slip through the net" as part of the leaked Afghan kill list scandal, Ministry of Defence sources have claimed.
MoD insiders said the "vast majority" of the 100,000 people who were trying to get to Britain in 2022, on the grounds that they had fought alongside or helped British troops, had zero connection to the Armed Forces.
The dataset, containing the personal information of nearly 19,000 people who applied for the Afghan Relocations and Assistance Policy (Arap), was released "in error" in February 2022 by a defence official.
Now, multiple sources have told The Telegraph that the Ministry of Defence (MoD) believed that as few as one-in-16 of those claiming asylum were genuine.
GETTY | A convoy of Taliban security personnel is seen moving along the streets as they celebrate the third anniversary of the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan
A Royal Marine was trying to sift out false claimants when he accidentally emailed a list of almost 19,000 names to what he thought were trusted contacts.
However, the spreadsheet fell into the wrong hands leading to a superinjunction being put in place to prevent it being reported by the press.
The news of the data leak only came to light after the superinjunction was lifted by a High Court judge.
Defence Secretary John Healey offered a “sincere apology” on behalf of the British Government for the data breach.
PA | John Healey issued a 'sincere apology' following the breach
One senior Cabinet source told The Telegraph that for every genuine claimant there were thought to be 15 bogus ones.
This was backed up by sources from the Ministry of Defence who claimed that the "vast majority” of those who claimed for resettlement in the UK were “ineligible”.
Following the data breach of people who had applied for Arap, the Government secretly set up another programme, the Afghanistan Response Route (ARR), to grant asylum to those whose lives were now deemed to be in danger.
Due to the superinjunction, there was no parliamentary or press scrutiny of the ARR programme.
GETTY | The Ministry of Defence had put in the gagging order
Details of more than 100 British nationals including spies and special forces soldiers were included in the data leak.
Projected costs of the scheme may include relocation costs, transitional accommodation, legal costs and local authority tariffs.
The case returned to the High Court in London on Thursday, sitting in a closed session in the morning where reporters were excluded.
During the public part of the hearing, Mr Justice Chamberlain said that while he needed to give lawyers for the Ministry of Defence an "opportunity" to argue why a closed hearing was needed, "I will be scrutinising very carefully any justification for holding any part of this hearing in private, let alone in closed."
The judge later said he would not be "kicking the ball down the road."