Secret Afghan Airlift

The Secret Afghan Airlift set the news agenda for days as MPs and the public discovered they had been kept in the dark for two years about a government scandal thanks to an unprecedented super-injunction. The court order had been obtained after the Mail’s David Williams discovered the government’s Afghan data leak in August 2023.

Mail journalists then spent two years in secret courts fighting for open justice and free speech, alongside journalists from The Times and The Independent. In July 2025, the government lifted the super-injunction.

Chief reporter Sam Greenhill’s write-up of the two-year battle is a gripping account of the secret legal drama. It was part of an eight-page special, in which Greenhill and Williams filed 10,000 words in a single day. 

The Mail was the only Fleet Street newspaper to photograph the actual airlifts, bringing the story alive. Defence editor Mark Nicol obtained sight of the lost dataset at the heart of the scandal, one of several powerful follow-ups. 

The Mail’s coverage promoted no fewer than four parliamentary probes, with Defence Secretary John Healey praising the paper’s “responsible journalism”. 

Judges’ comments: “A world-class scoop of rare magnitude where a government attempt to silence the story was part of the story itself. And a good example of Fleet Street collaboration and dogged determination to hold truth to power through the courts.”