‘The most difficult journey of my life’: an Afghan family’s escape to the UK

One of just six female judges who have so far managed to reach Britain speaks of fleeing Kabul and finding refuge in Manchester

The day the Taliban arrived in Kabul, Dina* went to her office in the city's law courts as normal. It was deserted. Only the cleaner was there," the 41-year-old supreme court judge remembers. The cleaner said: what are you doing here? Go home!"

Dina gathered as many legal papers and personal documents as she could carry and drove back to the four-storey home she shared with her husband and three children. There, she scanned in the most important bits of paper and burned the lot on her roof terrace. It was painful watching evidence of everything she worked so hard to achieve going up in flames.