See also   Iran regional meeting to champion INTERPOL’s Central Asian anti-terror 'Shield' (20/05/2008)

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Mr. Allaoddin BOROUJERDI, Chief of National Security and Foreign Policy Commission of the Parliament of Iran,
Brigadier General Esmaeil AHMADI MOGHADDAM, Commander in Chief of Iran Police,
Mr. Tariq PARVEZ, Director General of the Federal Investigation Agency of Pakistan and Head of NCB Islamabad,
Mr. Chairman, Brigadier General Alireza JAZINI, Deputy of the Coordination Directorate of Iran Police,
Dear colleagues,
Ladies and gentlemen,

Before I speak about the meeting itself, I would like to extend my appreciation to our hosts, and particularly to NCB Tehran, who have done everything possible to make our stay here in Tehran both productive and enjoyable. This is my first visit to Iran and I must say I am genuinely moved by the hospitality of our Iranian hosts. Having read about Iran and knowing that Iran is home to one of the world's oldest continuous major civilizations, I look forward to learning more about Iran for myself during my brief visit.

INTERPOL takes seriously Article Two of its constitution which states that we should work towards enhancing international police cooperation in respect of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. We have 186 member countries, and INTERPOL believes that each of our member countries should be treated with respect. We are the world’s most democratic international organization. We have a one country – one vote system. We do not have a Security Council, and no one country or small group of countries has the right to veto anything that INTERPOL does.

As the world’s largest international police organization, INTERPOL knows what is at stake when our member countries’ police services are not structured for cooperation on a multi-lateral or bi-lateral basis. Transnational criminals and international terrorists exploit these gaps in international police cooperation. With terrorist groups like Al Qaeda that have claimed the right to kill millions of us, it is both unwise and unacceptable for the world’s police not to cooperate with one another.

INTERPOL participated in the First Conference of Islamic Countries’ Police Chiefs conference hosted by Iran and just a few weeks ago provided training in criminal analysis to our Iranian police colleagues.

Ever since the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, INTERPOL has done its best to challenge old ways of thinking about how best to fight international terrorism.

Project KALKAN, which brings us together here in Tehran, is an excellent example of INTERPOL’s new and 21st century approach to international police cooperation. Project KALKAN comes out of our Fusion Task Force which was started in 2002. The Fusion Task Force which you will hear more about later challenged conventional wisdom on the willingness of member countries to cooperate in fighting terrorism. With the Fusion Task Force we sought to build up our database on suspected terrorists where all participating countries would agree to share certain names of suspected terrorists with all other countries. Using this approach, INTERPOL has grown its database of suspected terrorists from 2000 or so in 2002 to over 12,000 today. By doing so, INTERPOL has helped to make all INTERPOL member countries safer than they otherwise would be.

Project KALKAN focuses on 19 countries of the Central Asian region and I am glad to see that most of these 19 countries were able to send representatives to this meeting. Since the launching of Project KALKAN in 2004 following the terrorist attacks in Tashkent, Uzbekistan, cooperation among countries of the region has come a long way.

Back in 2004 — only four years ago — there was no coherent collaborative approach to sharing information about suspected terrorists in the region and inadequate knowledge of how to use global tools available via INTERPOL to enhance regional cooperation to counter terrorism.

Today, you form a crucial network of counter terrorism experts who have built trust relationships — and that itself is a great accomplishment. But the success of Project KALKAN goes far beyond that, for the concrete results of your cooperation are in my view nothing less than spectacular.

Back in 2004 (before Project KALKAN), INTERPOL had only a handful of terrorist profiles from the region — 25 to be precise — and information about only 4 terrorist organizations had been shared. Today, you have shared with one another and with INTERPOL more than 2300 profiles of terrorists and information concerning 56 organizations.

Since the project was launched in 2004, cooperation among your countries has increased dramatically. You have used INTERPOL’s secure global police communication system to exchange over 4100 messages among more than 60 countries. Prior to Project KALKAN less than 500 messages were exchanged in the four previous years, a period during which only 5 countries of the region were sharing such information via INTERPOL.

Your increased cooperation has led to more suspected terrorists being sought for arrest internationally than ever before in INTERPOL’s history. Indeed, we have seen a dramatic increase in the number of INTERPOL Red Notices and diffusions issued against dangerous terrorists since Project KALKAN – 4 times as many! As I speak, 1385 diffusions and notices issued by the core countries of Project KALKAN are alerting police in the region and all over the world about dangerous terrorists and requesting their arrest.

These international wanted person terrorist alerts issued via INTERPOL have produced effective results. In the three-year period after the project was launched, 176 confirmed arrests were made. One interesting fact is that, of these 176 confirmed arrests, 140 were made on European soil. This is a strong indicator that terrorism in the region has important ramifications outside the region. This also helps to explain why Project KALKAN now brings together more than 60 countries from all regions of the world, as well as the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe, which is a key institutional partner of this project. This indeed reinforces the global importance of Project KALKAN and INTERPOL’s 21st Century approach to fighting terrorism.

Arrests made with the help of information gathered in the framework of Project KALKAN also underline the global dimension of terrorism affecting the region.

Let me share some examples with you.

Operation Safari 2, conducted by the French Police in September 2007 against the financing activities of the Tamil Liberation Tigers is one very good example of this. In support of the French and Sri Lankan Police, INTERPOL’s General Secretariat coordinated with the Metropolitan Police Service, Royal Canadian Mounted Police, the FBI, Australian Federal Police, Swiss Federal Police, Italian Central Direction of Criminal Police and Dutch Police’s Counter Terrorism and Activism Unit, and as a result was able to provide French Police with:

• confirmed ID particulars of the suspects
• confirmed membership of suspects to the Tamil Liberation Tigers
• telephone numbers used by suspects in France
• information concerning front organizations used in France and their addresses
• the criminal antecedents of 3 of the suspects
• information about 3 Tamil Tigers cadres operating out of Charles de Gaulle and Orly airports in Paris

This information, shared by police from all over the world in the framework of Project KALKAN and through the coordination of INTERPOL’s General Secretariat, proved crucial in seriously disrupting the financing activities of one of the most dangerous organizations in the region.

Another striking example of the value of your cooperation was the investigation following the arrest by the German Federal Criminal Police (BKA) of three members of the Islamic Jihad Union terrorist organisation in Germany on 4 September 2007. Prior to their arrest the three terrorists were allegedly planning to carry out several simultaneous bombings in Germany. According to reports, the attacks were at a very advanced preparation stage and involved peroxide-based explosives. The combined explosive effect was potentially greater than the bombs used in the Madrid and London bombing attacks in March 2004 and July 2005.

After the arrests, the German Federal Criminal Police asked INTERPOL for assistance in investigating the case. Officers from the INTERPOL General Secretariat, working with NCB Wiesbaden, were able to share a wealth of information, in particular on the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, of which the Islamic Jihad Union is an offshoot. This information came out of a Project KALKAN meeting during your working group meeting in Tbilisi, Georgia, in July 2007. And this information proved crucial in the German Federal Police’s ability to prosecute the terrorists.

For this crucial assistance provided to the German Federal Criminal Police, NCB Wiesbaden sent INTERPOL a message of thanks and appreciation. Today, I would like to share this appreciation with you, because it is your work collectively and it is your dedication to international police cooperation that allowed the German police to effectively prosecute the three dangerous terrorists linked to an organization active in many of your countries.

These two cases prove that cooperation at the regional and global levels and the use of global cooperation channels are indeed an efficient and necessary means to fight terrorism and to save lives in your countries and abroad.

I could give many more examples but I will end my presentation today with one last accomplishment of Project KALKAN.

Since the beginning of the Fusion Task Force Project, of which Project KALKAN is a component, INTERPOL received sceptical comments about our ability to obtain sensitive information concerning terrorists. And indeed sharing information about terrorism is highly sensitive and requires a high level of trust. And it is one very significant accomplishment of Project KALKAN to have been able to build such trust.

This trust made Mr. Tariq PARVEZ, Director General of the Federal Investigation Agency of Pakistan, who is here with us today, feel confident enough to share with INTERPOL — and as a result with every one of you — a document referred to as the “Red Book”. This so-called Red Book, recently published by the Federal Investigations Agency of Pakistan, comprises the profiles of 169 of the most wanted terrorists belonging to Al Qaeda and its affiliates in Pakistan with identification information, aliases and photos. These terrorists, trained for suicide attacks, are a major threat for countries in the region and all over the world.

Pakistani authorities’ trust in INTERPOL and in all of you enabled countries from all over the world to search INTERPOL’s database, in which the names were entered. To this day, INTERPOL member countries searching our database made at least 22 hits on names provided by Pakistan. No one will ever know how many lives have been saved as a result of Pakistan’s sharing these names, but somewhere I am sure innocent people owe their lives to you.

In conclusion, I would like to congratulate you all and to say that, in my opinion, Project KALKAN is a vibrant example of outstanding international police cooperation at both the regional and the global levels, an example for all other regions of the world to follow. For every country present here has valuable counter terrorism experience and information to share with other countries of the region and beyond that enables law enforcement worldwide to save lives. Project Kalkan is a powerful example of how INTERPOL`s approach to fighting terrorism in the 21st century works.

This is why it is INTERPOL’s philosophy to always maintain police channels open, no matter the state of diplomatic relations between its member countries. Each of us is a national of a country, and each of us should recognize that unless police services around the world are able to communicate and cooperate with one another, transnational criminals and terrorists will exploit these gaps in our own country. This is my response to those who would like to turn meetings such as this one into political events by preventing police from their countries from participating in such meetings.

INTERPOL is devoted to fostering police cooperation among all of its member countries because INTERPOL believes that closing police channels augments global threats rather than reducing them.

Thank you very much.