Afghan women’s football team evacuated to UK may include fraudulent non-players

LONDON: A number of women evacuated from Afghanistan to the UK may not have been the elite football players they claimed to be, an investigation has found.

Thirty-five women who made up the Afghan national women’s team and an additional 95 relatives arrived in the UK in November 2021 after the fall of Afghanistan to the Taliban two months earlier.

A BBC investigation has since learned that up to 13 players who claimed to be part of the national team may have lied on their visa applications, which were all approved by the Home Office.