Setting foot in the UK for the first time, Afghan families are welcomed by a British soldier.
They have just stepped off an unmarked plane which landed at Stansted Airport. It is part of the Government’s clandestine immigration scheme.
Today, after 23 months of being gagged by a ‘superinjunction’, the Mail can reveal the scheme to bring in thousands of Afghans, and how Parliament has been deliberately kept oblivious – or ‘misled’ as a judge heard.
The Government’s secret migration scheme – codenamed Operation Rubific – was launched after a disastrous data-leak blunder by the UK military which put 100,000 people ‘at risk of death’ from the Taliban – mainly Afghans but British officers including Special Forces were also named.
Every couple of weeks or so, without fanfare, plain white charter planes have been landing at Stansted.
The Daily Mail is the only media organisation to have discovered and witnessed what is happening.
A British soldier welcomes an Afghan family to Britain and points them towards their coach as part of a secret scheme exposed by the Daily Mail to bring migrants into Britain
The Afghan migrants have been landing at Stansted around once a fortnight and are bussed from a private hanger
A family prepares to get on to a coach to start a new life in the UK
Hundreds of migrants file off a taxpayer-chartered jet
This unmarked Airbus 330-202, used as part of the clandestine scheme, touches down in Britain from Pakistan this year
The migrants on board have been smuggled out of Afghanistan and flown to Stansted (pictured) from Islamabad
Packed with hundreds of Afghans, the planes taxi to one of the Essex airport’s private hangers – away from any prying eyes in the usual passenger terminal familiar to millions of British holidaymakers.
There, out of sight, Home Office staff process the men, women and children into the UK. Then they are quietly bussed to military bases and hotels around Britain.
It is nearly two years since the Mail found out the British military had disastrously lost a database, imperilling 100,000 Afghans, many of whom were owed sanctuary in the UK as a reward for their loyalty to British troops.
The government’s hush-hush response was secretive Operation Rubific – to rescue thousands of people. The airlifts have been going on ‘under the radar’, to quote a High Court judge, because a superinjunction prevented anyone from revealing them.
But even if we could not publicise them, the injunction did not prevent the Mail’s journalists from chronicling them.
At Stansted Airport, from dawn to dusk the Mail has regularly witnessed the planes coming in. Other flights have also been coming into RAF Brize Norton, we can reveal, but this is the military’s biggest airfield and there is not a public viewing gallery inside the Oxfordshire airbase.
Having been plucked to safety by a British-led task force in Afghanistan, the Afghans are spirited to neighbouring Pakistan. The Mail knows operational details of how they cross the border but is not revealing them. Once in the Pakistan capital Islamabad, the men and their families are subjected to health and security checks, before being loaded onto British government planes bound for the UK.
During the nine-hour flight, many of these Afghans will be wondering what lies in store ahead. For many of them, it is the first time they can truly believe they have managed to flee the murderous Taliban. But few if any of them have ever been to Britain before, where their new lives await.
In February last year, the Mail witnessed a 250-seater Boeing 767 touching down in the drizzle just after the sun set. Minutes later a second plane arrived from the same destination. Between them, more than 420 Afghan men and their wives and children had arrived at Stansted.
Flight Yu643 from Islamabad arrives at Stansted Airport on May 23 this year
The plane touches down just London with Ryanair planes shown in the background
The plane was packed with Afghan migrants able to come to the UK due to an email blunder
Those on board have been given a ticket to Britain amid fears they could be targeted by the Taliban
A British soldier speaks to an Afghan family as they leave a hanger
Coach-after-coach is laid on to take the new arrivals to either a hotel or Ministry of Defence accommodation
Most of the people who helped the UK in Afghanistan will have been men, but their families are also permitted to come to Britain to start a new life
The migrants, including babes in arms, head for their bus at Stansted
The Government secured a superinjunction and fought the Daily Mail in court to prevent the scheme being made public
A soldier leads a family to a second coach close to where their plane landed in late May
A group of Afghan men moved to Britain as part of the secret scheme exposed by the Daily Mail walk outside their Bracknell hotel
A woman on her smartphone returning to her hotel accommodation
They will not have minded the drizzle, for this was the moment they were finally free. The Mail knows the identities of many of those on board the flights. Some of them were military interpreters who had displayed great bravery and loyalty to the British, and are owed a debt of gratitude by this country.
It is not possible to say whether all of the passengers that day had earned their ride to the UK in the same way. And it unknown precisely what proportion of the Afghans who are coming here are ones whose names were leaked when the British government lost their data and put 100,000 people ‘at risk of death’ from a vengeful Taliban. What we know for certain is that, after the data breach, the Operation Rubific rescue flights have been coming in thick and fast, carrying an average of about a hundred people a week.
The unmarked planes, sometimes a Boeing, other times a 247-seater Airbus 300, often land just before or after Ryanair holiday flights, but they do not follow those jets to the Stansted passenger terminal.
Instead they trundle to a special secure zone of the airport. Once disembarked in a special hanger, the new arrivals are processed by Border Force officials before being driven in a convoy of coaches to military bases where they are billeted in lodgings usually housing the families of British servicemen, or town centre hotels.
Originally, the flights were organised by British officials but now it is handled in Islamabad by the International Organisation for Migration (IOM) paid for by the UK government.
