Chamberlain J has today handed down judgment in Ministry of Defence v Global Media and Entertainment Limited and others [2025] EWHC 1806 (Admin), discharging an unprecedented super-injunction.
The effect of the Judge’s ruling is to discharge a contra mundum privacy injunction first granted to the Ministry of Defence on 1 September 2023, the terms of which prevented the publication of:
(a) the fact of the release by someone working for the UK Government of a dataset containing personal information and contact details of persons who applied for relocation to the UK from Afghanistan following the Taliban coup in 2021; and
(b) the existence of the injunction itself.
The injunction was granted and maintained because the MOD assessed that public disclosure of the data incident would expose thousands of people to the risk of extra-judicial killing or serious violence by the Taliban. The injunction was served on seven media organisations, between September 2023 and July 2025. Proceedings have been conducted entirely in PRIVATE and in CLOSED throughout the last two years and have considered a complex legal and factual situation, engaging the freedom of the press, risks to life and national security.
John Bethell acted for the Ministry of Defence throughout the proceedings, as part of a counsel team instructed by the Government Legal Department.
Previous judgments of the High Court and the Court of Appeal in these proceedings are also being published today and the High Court has imposed a more limited injunction on an interim basis:
Ruling (01 September 2023)
Judgment 1 (23 November 2023)
Judgment 2 (15 February 2024)
Judgment 3 (21 May 2024)
Court of Appeal Judgment (26 July 2024)
Continuing Injunction (15 July 2025)
The Secretary of State has made a statement to Parliament and the story has been extensively covered in the media, including The Independent, The Times, The Daily Mail, The Telegraph and The Financial Times, all of which were parties to the injunction proceedings.
