Counter Terrorism Department Khyber Pakhtunkhwa received training on Criminal Analysis Tools and Techniques to Disrupt Terrorist Networks)

18 October 2019, Islamabad: In order to strengthen crime analysis capacity within the Counter Terrorism Department of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP), a tailored, practical and sustainable approach has been adopted to cater their technical needs. The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) under its Pakistan's Action to Counter Terrorism (PACT) project with the financial support from European Union (EU), designed a training session on the "Use of Criminal Analysis Tools and Techniques for CTD KP''. The aim of this training was to impart hybrid skills required by the participants from the Cyber Forensic Unit (CFU), Research and Analysis (R&A) Wing, supervisory police officers and IT teams. The training was successfully delivered to 34 participants from these units and various ranges of the CTD KP with significant participation from the most security prone areas.

The training was delivered intuitively which increased the awareness on the fundamental criminal-intelligence principles, concepts, information gathering techniques and sharing of actionable criminal-intelligence by the UNODC expert Mr. Muhammad Saqib Khan, Programme Officer- Border Management. The analysts and technical teams shared knowledge through presenting their models and remained engaged during the question and answer sessions.

The later part of the training was delivered by IBM i2 Analyst Note Book (ANB) certified expert from UNODC, Mr. Amanullah Khan, Programme Officer-Police, who introduced the participants to the core knowledge of developing logical inferences from the incoming information from different sources for analysis, and ways to process that information into actionable intelligence using multiple tools and techniques.

The participants acquired new skills on using innovative analytical tools within IBM i2 ANB through completion of scenario-based exercises pertaining to the mandate of the CTD KP and more importantly the flow of information among all the operational and strategic units. Besides other basic analytical tools available in the IBM i2 ANB software, the participants also learned advanced analytical techniques to investigate terrorist networks, identify hidden patterns to forecast, Social Network Analysis (SNA) for disrupting terrorist and fraudulent networks. They were assessed thoroughly through assignments and presentations during the group sessions.

The participants took interest in learning the new tools, especially the link analysis techniques of IBM i2 ANB for Call Data Records (CDRs), tracking financial flows in extortion and kidnapping cases which further fuel the terror financing. The participants also deliberated on the limitations and problems they faced previously in processing such information, which they considered will become easy for them to process using IBM i2 ANB. Request for development and integration of different data repositories was also raised by the participants and a plan was discussed with Mr. Amanullah Khan, Programme Officer-Police, to ensure best utility of the software. 

Mr. Syed Arslan, Advisor PACT; Mr. Tahir Ayub, DIG CTD KP; and Mr. Francois Zabolt, Counterterrorism Expert- EU Pakistan, attended the closing ceremony and distributed participation certificates. Mr. Syed Arslan- Advisor PACT, lauded the efforts and hard work of the CTD KP in curbing the menace of terrorism in challenging environments of the province and encouraged the participants to use the knowledge which they have attained during this training in their respective field areas. The DIG CTD thanked the UNODC and EU for the technical support they are providing through designing these capacity building schemes under the PACT project. He assured his future cooperation with PACT team and requested for similar trainings for the technical teams in future to introduce them to the emerging technologies in order to keep abreast of the new advancements in predictive and criminal analysis.

The UNODC under the PACT project has already procured latest version of IBM i2 ANB licenses for the technical teams of the CTD KP. On completion of this training, the participants also received the training module along with necessary readings for full utilization of the software and tools provided.

The assistance in the provision of the software licenses and this training was made possible through the generous financial support of the European Union.