Harry Potter author JK Rowling helped Afghan lawyers flee the Taliban

JK Rowling secretly donated hundreds of thousands of pounds to save women lawyers as the Taliban swept back to power, it has emerged.

The Harry Potter author responded to appeals for help as the women and their families were at risk after Nato allies suddenly abandoned the country in the autumn of 2021. It is believed 508 Afghans were save.

In the House of Lords on Thursday, Lord Alton revealed the author and Lord Hintze were involved in “a Schindler’s List moment” after human rights lawyer Baroness Helena Kennedy needed money for a rescue.

He was referring to the film about how industrialist Oskar Schindler saved more than 1,000 Jews from the Holocaust during World War Two.

He said: “Some 500 people were evacuated, all of whom, with their children and husbands, were on Taliban kill lists. I know that the noble Lord’s intervention, and that of the author JK Rowling, undoubtedly saved many lives.”

© Yui Mok/PA Wire

Kennedy, a director of the Institute of Human Rights for the International Bar Association, said: “Two years ago, two women judges in Kabul’s Supreme Court were assassinated – that really terrified all the women judges.

“Then in August of that year, when there was the military evacuation from Afghanistan, I started receiving desperate phone calls from women judges hiding in their basements.

“Taliban had been released from prison and were coming after these women, some of whom had jailed them for domestic violence and other crimes. It was clear they were high on the list of those at risk of being killed.”

Kennedy found that chartering a plane out of Afghanistan would cost £650,000 a trip. They then had to be accommodated in Athens – chosen because Greece’s president had been a female judge – while they sought asylum worldwide. A total of £4million was needed.

Kennedy said: “JK Rowling just said: ‘I want to help these women’. She gave me hundreds of thousands of pounds to pay for hostel accommodation and people’s living expenses.”

Of the 508 rescued, around 60 are now living in Britain, according to Kennedy.