UK Special Forces vetoed asylum applications of Afghan ex-commando allies

File photo of British soldiers and Afghan security personnel in Kabul in 2011 (AFP)
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Updated 17 February 2025
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UK Special Forces vetoed asylum applications of Afghan ex-commando allies

  • Over 2,000 Afghan personnel had claims rejected following fall of country to Taliban in 2021
  • Afghan commandos could be compelled to testify at war crimes inquiry if resettled in Britain

LONDON: More than 2,000 resettlement applications by former Afghan Armed Forces commandos were rejected after UK Special Forces personnel vetoed their claims, preventing them from testifying to an inquiry into alleged war crimes, the BBC reported on Monday.

The UK Ministry of Defense revealed in a court case brought by a former Afghan soldier that officers denied applications from thousands of men who had fought the Taliban alongside the British in Afghanistan, having previously denied that a policy of doing so existed.

The MoD also refused to say, when asked by the BBC, if any applications for Triples Afghan soldiers — so-called because of the three-number identifications their units were assigned — had been supported by UK Special Forces senior figures.

Afghan Triples units were trained and funded by the UK. They were deemed at risk of reprisals following the fall of Afghanistan to the Taliban in 2021, and allowed to apply for resettlement in the UK.

However, controversy has surrounded the failure to support applications by UK Special Forces officers, as an inquiry is ongoing into allegations of war crimes committed by Special Forces soldiers in Afghanistan, where Triples commandos were present.

If resettled in the UK, the Triples could be compelled by the inquiry to give evidence. Many remain in hiding in Afghanistan.

One former Triples officer told the BBC: “Although (some asylum application) decisions have been overturned, it’s too late for some people.

“The delays have caused a lot of problems. People have been captured by the Taliban or lost their lives.”

The officer said Afghan commandos felt “betrayed” by their former “brothers” in the Special Forces, adding: “If Special Forces made these rejections they should say why. They should have to answer.”

The MoD denied that the Special Forces had the power to veto asylum applications, but former Defense Minister Andrew Murrison later admitted that they did after a BBC investigation.

Mike Martin MP, a former British Army officer who served in Afghanistan, told the BBC: “There is the appearance that UK Special Forces blocked the Afghan special forces applications because they were witnesses to the alleged UK war crimes currently being investigated in the Afghan inquiry.”

He added: “If the MoD is unable to offer any explanation, then the matter should be included in the inquiry.”

Former Conservative MP Johnny Mercer, who also served in Afghanistan and was an armed forces minister while in government, said he had heard “horrific” allegations made by Triples soldiers against UK Special Forces members.

It is “very clear to me that there is a pool of evidence that exists within the Afghan (special forces) community that are now in the UK that should contribute to this inquiry,” he added.

The ministry previously told the BBC: “There has been no evidence to suggest that any part of the MoD has sought to prevent former members of the Afghan specialist units from giving evidence to the inquiry.”


Immigration judge denies bond for Tufts University student from Turkiye, her lawyers say

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Immigration judge denies bond for Tufts University student from Turkiye, her lawyers say

Rumeysa Ozturk’s lawyers filed a new request with a federal judge in Vermont considering whether to take jurisdiction of her detention case
The lawyers asked the judge to order her to be brought to the state by Friday

VERMONT, USA: An immigration judge denied bond for a Tufts University student from Turkiye who has been detained by authorities in Louisiana for three weeks over what her lawyers say is apparent retaliation for an op-ed piece she co-wrote in the student newspaper.
Meanwhile, Rumeysa Ozturk’s lawyers filed a new request with a federal judge in Vermont considering whether to take jurisdiction of her detention case. The lawyers asked the judge to order her to be brought to the state by Friday and hold a hearing next week. They said that would allow better communication with her legal team and a doctor to evaluate her. They say Ozturk has suffered five asthma attacks in detention.
Lawyers for Ozturk, 30, had asked an immigration judge that she be released on bond as her immigration case proceeds. That judge denied her request Wednesday, the same day Ozturk had a hearing, they said in a statement released Thursday morning.
The Department of Homeland Security presented one document to support their opposition to Ozturk’s bond request: a one-paragraph State Department memo revoking her student visa, her lawyers said in the new court filing.
The memo says that Ozturk’s visa was revoked on March 21 following an assessment that she had been involved in associations ”‘that may undermine US foreign policy by creating a hostile environment for Jewish students and indicating support for a designated terrorist organization’ including co-authoring an op-ed that found common cause with an organization that was later temporarily banned from campus.”
Ozturk’s lawyers said the immigration judge denied bond based on the “untenable conclusion that Ms. Ozturk was both a flight risk and a danger to the community.”
Messages seeking comment Thursday were emailed to the department and to ICE.
Ozturk, a doctoral student studying child development, was taken by immigration officials as she walked along a street in the Boston suburb of Somerville on March 25. After being taken to New Hampshire and then Vermont, she was put on a plane the next day and moved to an Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention center in Basile, Louisiana.
Ozturk is among several people with ties to American universities whose visas were revoked or have been stopped from entering the US after they were accused of attending demonstrations or publicly expressed support for Palestinians. A Louisiana immigration judge has ruled that the US can deport Columbia University graduate student Mahmoud Khalil based on the federal government’s argument that he poses a national security risk.
Ozturk’s lawyers are challenging the legal authority for ICE’s detention. They also have asked US District Judge William Sessions in Vermont, where her detention case was transferred after lawyers first petitioned for her release in Massachusetts, to take jurisdiction of it and release her.
Sessions, who held a hearing Monday, has not ruled yet.
“The government’s entire case against Rümeysa is based on the same one-paragraph memo from the State Department to ICE that just points back to Rümeysa’s op-ed,” Marty Rosenbluth, one of Ozturk’s attorneys, said in a statement.
Ozturk was one of four students who wrote an op-ed in the campus newspaper, The Tufts Daily, last year criticizing the university’s response to student activists demanding that Tufts “acknowledge the Palestinian genocide,” disclose its investments and divest from companies with ties to Israel.
Ozturk’s lawyers say her detention violates her constitutional rights, including free speech and due process. They said they didn’t know for hours where she was after she was taken. They said they were unable to speak to her until more than 24 hours after she was detained. Ozturk herself said she unsuccessfully made multiple requests to speak to a lawyer.
A Department of Homeland Security spokesperson said last month, without providing evidence, that investigations found that Ozturk engaged in activities in support of Hamas, a US-designated terrorist group.

Russia says certain countries trying to ‘derail’ its talks with US

Updated 4 min 9 sec ago
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Russia says certain countries trying to ‘derail’ its talks with US

  • “There are a lot of people, structures, countries trying to derail our dialogue with the United States,” Dmitriev said
  • “There is very active propaganda against Russia in the United States on various mass media”

MOSCOW: Russia’s top economic negotiator said Thursday that certain countries were trying to “derail” Moscow’s talks with the United States, as the two sides work toward normalizing ties.
President Donald Trump has upended US foreign policy since his return to the White House in January, reaching out directly to Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin in an attempt to broker a ceasefire in the Ukraine conflict.
US and Russian officials have met multiple times since, including on restoring embassy staffing levels after years of diplomatic expulsions, but Trump’s efforts to broker a Ukraine truce have so far failed to bear fruit.
“There are a lot of people, structures, countries trying to derail our dialogue with the United States,” Kirill Dmitriev, head of Russia’s sovereign wealth fund, told reporters.
“There is very active propaganda against Russia in the United States on various mass media. So it is very important to convey the Russian position directly,” he added.
Dmitriev did not say which countries he was referring to, but Moscow has redirected much of its criticism over the Ukraine conflict toward Europe since Trump took office, accusing the EU and UK of being the main obstacles to peace.
Dmitriev’s comments came moments before French President Emmanuel Macron, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio and US envoy Steve Witkoff began a meeting in Paris on crafting a Ukraine ceasefire.


More than 130 students in US join federal lawsuit over revoked visas

Updated 27 min 10 sec ago
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More than 130 students in US join federal lawsuit over revoked visas

  • The students allege the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency abruptly and illegally terminated their status
  • The initial complaint was filed by 17 students on April 11 in the state of Georgia

WASHINGTON: More than 130 international students across the United States have joined a federal lawsuit accusing the Trump administration of unlawfully canceling their visas, jeopardizing their legal status in the country, court documents show.
The students allege the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency abruptly and illegally terminated their status in the government’s Student and Exchange Visitor Information System (SEVIS) database, putting them at risk of arrest, detention and deportation.
The initial complaint was filed by 17 students on April 11 in the state of Georgia.
Since then, 116 more have joined them as the administration of US President Donald Trump pursues a wide-ranging immigration crackdown that has targeted foreign students, among many others.
Across campuses in the United States, international students have been scrambling as they have discovered their visas have been revoked, often for little or no reason, according to court documents and media reports.
The Georgia lawsuit names US Attorney General Pam Bondi, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and Acting ICE Director Todd Lyons as defendants and seeks to reinstate the revoked visas.
In the complaint, which does not identify the students by name “due to fear of retaliation,” the summaries offered for each of the 17 original cases reveal seemingly arbitrary cancelations, with each plaintiff giving their best guess as to what may have prompted them to be targeted.
Some pointed to minor traffic infringements, such as John Doe 2, a Chinese citizen pursuing an engineering doctorate at the Georgia Institute of Technology.
He was notified by his school that his visa was revoked after a criminal records check, but the violation was not specified. The student believes it may have been related to a traffic offense that was closed and, according to the filing, he has no other criminal history.
Another of the students, an Indian national at New York Institute of Technology, said he had been found not guilty of shoplifting, and the case was dismissed.
“Over the past week, visa revocations and SEVIS terminations have shaken campuses across the country,” the complaint says.
“The SEVIS terminations have taken place against the backdrop of numerous demands being made of universities by the federal government and threats of cutting off billions of dollars in federal funding.”
The suit also noted that students’ removal from the government database could jeopardize the individuals’ ability to reenter the United States in the future.


Bulgarian government survives a no-confidence vote over corruption

Updated 33 min 40 sec ago
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Bulgarian government survives a no-confidence vote over corruption

  • The government condemned the motion as an attempt to derail Bulgaria’s plan to adopt the euro at the beginning of 2026
  • Rampant corruption has marred everyday life in Bulgaria for years

SOFIA: Bulgaria’s government on Thursday survived a second no-confidence motion in parliament in as many weeks.
The motion tabled by the Mech party and backed by two other nationalist and pro-Russia groups accused the government of failing to effectively combat rampant graft and bribery. It was defeated in a 130-72 vote in the 240-seat parliament. The government’s coalition Cabinet is led by the center-right GERB party.
The government condemned the motion as an attempt to derail Bulgaria’s plan to adopt the euro at the beginning of 2026, which would consolidate its European integration.
Contrary to its declared priority to stand up against corruption, the pro-Western opposition PP-DB did not support the motion, citing an upcoming European Commission report on Bulgaria’s bid to join the eurozone as a reason to avoid destabilizing the government.
“Any vote of no confidence before Bulgaria’s entry into the eurozone is not a vote to topple the government, but a vote to stop its pro-European course,” said PP-DB legislator Venko Sabrutev.
Rampant corruption has marred everyday life in Bulgaria for years, with dishonest public procurement, unregulated lobbying, vote buying and property fraud. Tackling graft has been complicated by the state of the judiciary, which is widely criticized for being beholden to the interests of politicians.


Russia’s top court lifts terror group designation on Afghanistan’s Taliban

Updated 51 min 58 sec ago
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Russia’s top court lifts terror group designation on Afghanistan’s Taliban

  • The move was a diplomatic victory for the Taliban
  • Taliban delegations have attended various forums hosted by Russia

MOSCOW: Russia’s Supreme Court on Thursday lifted a ban on Afghanistan’s Taliban, who were designated as a terrorist group more than two decades ago.
The move was a diplomatic victory for the Taliban, who were put on Russia’s list of terrorist organizations in 2003, making any contact with them punishable under Russian law.
At the same time, Taliban delegations have attended various forums hosted by Russia as Moscow has sought to position itself as a regional power broker.
The court’s ruling on a request by the Prosecutor General’s office followed last year’s adoption of a law stipulating that the official designation as a terrorist organization could be suspended by a court.