There were “serious failings” in how the Ministry of Defence handled applications from Afghan special forces soldiers to come to Britain, MPs have concluded – two years and a half years after The Independent exposed how the former commandos had been abandoned.
In a report published by the defence select committee into a Ministry of Defence (Mod) data breach, MPs reviewed how the department handled sanctuary applications from former special forces units, known as the Triples.
They concluded there were “material defects” in how the former commandos’ applications were handled – with thousands having their cases rejected without proper investigation in a push to get through the backlog.
Officials at the MoD “did not adequately understand or apply the evidence relevant to the Triples’ relationship with the UK”, MPs said in the report published on Thursday.
The result was that hundreds of the former commandos, who had fought alongside UK special forces units in Afghanistan, were wrongly abandoned after the Taliban take-over.
The injustice was first exposed publicly by a joint November 2023 investigation by The Independent, Lighthouse Reports and Sky News, in which we revealed that the former commandos had been beaten, tortured or killed by the Taliban.
We revealed that the Triples served closely with the British, receiving a salary directly from the UK government - in the face of incorrect claims by the MoD to the reverse.
In 2024, the government admitted that flawed decision-making had led these Afghans to being turned down for sanctuary in Britain and pledged to re-examine hundreds of their cases.
When Labour took power, armed forces minister Luke Pollard confirmed that the MoD had been wrong to deny members of Afghan specialist units were employed by the UK. He also announced a review of some 2,000 applications.
By March 2026, when the review was closed 884 decisions had been overturned, the defence committee report found. Of the approximately 2,000 cases, around 30 per cent were subsequently found to be eligible for relocation due to their previous roles helping the British and a further 300 were found to be eligible due to their data being exposed in the Afghan data breach.
The defence committee report, published on Thursday, concluded: “This striking rate of correction indicates that the review was not simply a tidying-up exercise, but a necessary response to material defects in the original process”.
MPs said that the failings showed the MoD “did not adequately understand or apply the evidence relevant to the Triples’ relationship with the UK” and “failed to maintain or interrogate” their own records.
Because of this history, the MOD “has a special responsibility to former Triples whose applications were wrongly refused and who, because of those failings and subsequent delay, may have spent additional years in hiding or been left to make their own way to a third country”.
In April, the MoD told Afghan families approved for sanctuary in Britain that they will have to flee the Taliban-run country on their own.
Campaigners have warned that this has created a “two-tier system” where those who are able to raise the necessary funds can relocate but vulnerable and destitute families cannot.
The defence committee report examined the government’s handling of a MoD data breach that exposed the personal details of tens of thousands of Afghans.
The breach, which happened in February 2022 but was not discovered until August 2023, was covered up by the use of an unprecedented superinjunction and led to the secret evacuation of thousands of Afghan families.
Person A, an independent caseworker who was one of the first people to alert the MoD to the data leak, said that the secret pathway set up for those affected by the breach had “prioritised the lives of people with no claim to come to the UK over eligible applicants with decades of service supporting the UK mission.”
They warned that “even now there are large numbers of eligible Afghans waiting for initial approval to come to the UK”, adding: “I am concerned that these cases are still being routinely, and incorrectly, rejected”.
As of 1 June, the MoD’s Afghan resettlement cases backlog stood at around 14,000 applications, down from 25,000 in July 2025, the defence committee revealed.
MPs warned: “The government must ensure that pressure to close the programme does not reduce the quality of decision-making”.
The MoD said that they were delivering on the government’s promise to support eligible Triples who contributed to the UK mission in Afghanistan.
