The international policing agency INTERPOL has information on over 43,000 ‘Foreign Terrorist Fighter’ profiles available for the world’s police to consult as part of their counter-terrorism investigations. Its Criminal Analysis File also contains some 300,000 entities, including financial identifiers and phone numbers. INTERPOL Secretary General Jürgen Stock was speaking in Paris at a ‘No Money for Terror’ ministerial meeting in April. Stock said INTERPOL’s system of global Notices alerts and its secure police information sharing network I-24/7 were proven tools in alerting and sharing information on terrorists and their activities.
He said: “Alerting law enforcement through INTERPOL Notices and communications channels helps target the movement of suspects, their modus operandi, and their money flows. It strengthens the capacity of law enforcement to disrupt terrorist activity and ultimately to save lives. Such information helps link together the ‘critical information chain’ on global terrorist activity. INTERPOL strongly encourages countries to share more of such information so that it can be made available on the frontlines of policing and close potentially dangerous security gaps.”
Stock underlined the need to work ‘holistically’ via legal, operational and technical channels to combat the financing of terrorism, INTERPOL is studying the feasibility of creating dedicated communications systems to support paperless and faster international judicial cooperation, before and after the arrest of terror suspects.
Visit https://www.interpol.int/Crime-areas/Terrorism/Terrorism.
