One Special Forces officer blocked 1,585 Afghans from settling in UK

A UK Special Forces officer for my part rejected 1,585 resettlement programs from Afghans with credible hyperlinks to big forces, newly launched paperwork say.

The recordsdata, disclosed by way of the Ministry of Defence in courtroom on Thursday, display the unnamed UKSF officer rejected each and every software referred to him in the summertime of 2023, in what used to be described as a “sprint”.

The MoD informed the courtroom that the officer could have been attached to the ongoing inquiry into alleged battle crimes dedicated by way of the SAS.

The admission comes after the BBC printed ultimate week that the us officer – who prior to now served in Afghanistan – rejected programs from Afghans who could have witnessed the alleged crimes.

Afghan commandos, referred to as the Triples, supported the SAS and SBS for years in Afghanistan and have been in peril of reprisal after the Taliban seized again the rustic in 2021.

But hundreds of UK resettlement programs containing credible hyperlinks to the Triples have been rejected.

The rejections got here at a time when a public inquiry in the United Kingdom had begun investigating allegations that British particular forces had dedicated battle crimes on operations in Afghanistan the place the Triples have been provide.

If the Afghan commandos have been in the United Kingdom, they might be referred to as as witnesses – however the inquiry has no energy to compel testimony from international nationals who’re in another country.

MoD officers raised considerations as early as October 2022 in regards to the position of the us in rejecting programs with hyperlinks to the Triples devices, the brand new paperwork display.

In a witness commentary submitted to courtroom, Natalie Moore, the pinnacle of the United Kingdom’s Afghan resettlement crew, wrote that she was involved the us used to be making use of a tradition of “automatic rejections” in regards to Triples, giving upward thrust to the “appearance of an unpublished mass rejection policy”.

Despite considerations first being raised internally in October 2022 – and once more between October 2023 and January 2024 – in March 2024 the MoD denied to each the BBC and Parliament that UKSF had had a veto over the previous commandos’ programs.

In January 2024, following the BBC’s revelation of the lifestyles of a UKSF veto over programs, then-Veterans Minister Johnny Mercer warned senior cupboard ministers in writing of a “significant conflict of interest that should be obvious to all”.

The veto gave the us “decision-making power over… potential witnesses to the inquiry”, Mercer stated, calling the association “deeply inappropriate”.

In the similar letter, Mercer stated that he had noticed proof that 5 former Triples were killed by way of the Taliban after their resettlement programs have been rejected.

And in a gathering with Ms Moore, he highlighted a case wherein an applicant used to be rejected having “previously confronted UKSF leadership about EJKs [extrajudicial killings] in Afghanistan”.

Mercer informed the BBC on Friday he used to be “shocked and appalled” on the revelations from the courtroom case.

“When I raised what was happening with the most senior officers and civil servants in the UK Government, one in particular from UKSF claimed he was offended, and it was offensive to UKSF, that I had raised it.

“He used to be both mendacity to my face as a Cabinet Minister, which is severe sufficient, or is so deeply incompetent that he did not know.”

The Triples – so-called because their designations were CF 333 and ATF 444 – were set up, trained, and paid by the UKSF. When Afghanistan fell to the Taliban, they were judged to be in grave danger of reprisal and were entitled to apply for resettlement to the UK.

But more than 2,000 applications judged by resettlement caseworkers to have credible evidence were subsequently rejected by the UKSF.

The MoD later announced a review of more than 2,000 rejected applications after finding that the decisions were “no longer tough”.

Earlier this week, Armed Forces Minster Luke Pollard announced a new phase of the review to take into account up to 2,500 further cases which may have been improperly rejected.

Some of the former Triples who were denied visas have since been tortured and killed by the Taliban, according to testimony from former colleagues, family members and lawyers.

The documents disclosed in court on Thursday, as part of a judicial review case brought by a former member of the Triples, reveal that the government launched two investigations that examined the actions of the UKSF and the allegations of a conflict of interest at the heart of the Triples rejections.

A summary of one of those investigations, known as Operation X, said it “didn’t download any proof of hidden motives at the a part of the us liaison officer” and found “no proof of computerized/immediate/mass rejections” of the Triples by the UKSF – but provided no evidence to back up those conclusions.

It instead concluded that the more than 2,000 rejections of Triples were down to “slack and unprofessional verification processes” by the UKSF liaison officer and “lax procedures adopted by way of the officer in no longer following up on all strains of enquiry earlier than issuing rejections”.

More than 600 of those rejections have since been overturned.

BBC Panorama reported recently that the rejection of the Triples applications had been overseen by Gen Jenkins, who was head of the UKSF at the time and was promoted last week to be the head of the Royal Navy.

In the court documents, the MoD said that Gen Jenkins had no involvement with the applications and that he had not appointed the UKSF officer who rejected them.

Tom de la Mare KC, representing the former Triple who brought the case, accused the MoD of breaching its duty of candour in the case by failing to disclose evidence of a blanket practice of rejection of the Triples applications.

He further accused the MoD of providing misleading responses to requests for information.

Cathryn McGahey KC, representing the MoD, told the court she did “no longer search to excuse or underplay in anyway the supply of faulty solutions”, and she apologised for the fact that the MoD had previously told the court that no veto existed.

The case is examining whether the review of the rejected Triples applications was conducted in a lawful manner. Ms McGahey told the court that “there would possibly were a greater means of doing it, however that does not make it illegal”.

Daniel Carey, partner at DPG, the law firm acting on behalf of the former Triples, said: “My shopper spent years asking the MoD to rectify the blanket refusals of Triples staff and has noticed many killed and harmed by way of the Taliban in that point.

“He is pleased that the MoD have agreed to inform everyone of the decisions in their cases and to tell the persons affected whether their cases are under review or not, but it should not have required litigation to achieve basic fairness.”

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