The UNODC Terrorism Prevention Branch (UNODC/TPB) held a regional workshop titled "Strengthening regional cooperation in foreign terrorist fighter (FTF) criminal cases", in Beirut, Lebanon, from 15-17 November 2016.
The event took place within the framework of UNODC's Global Initiative on Strengthening the Legal Regime against FTFs in the Middle East, North Africa and South Eastern Europe (2015-2019), funded by Canada, the European Union, Japan and the United States of America.
The regional workshop brought together about 35 senior criminal justice and law enforcement officials representing key counter-terrorism institutions from Egypt, Iraq, Jordan and Lebanon. UNODC/TPB experts were joined by regional and international experts representing Morocco and Spain, as well as the Counter-Terrorism Committee Executive Directorate, EUROJUST, and the League of Arab States.
The three-day event offered a forum to examine practical means and tools that could be utilized to further increase cooperation on criminal matters in FTF related cases at the sub-regional level. In this respect, judicial, procedural and operational challenges were exposed through presentations and constructive discussions about concrete terrorism cases involving regional cooperation.
As a result of the training, the participants were provided with a set of recommendations and concrete measures likely to improve mutual legal assistance and extradition requests at the regional level. These included modernizing the respective national laws and regulations, as well as the setting up of informal mechanisms to facilitate judicial cooperation while complying with existing domestic and international legal frameworks.
In order to support and ensure the implementation of the concrete measures identified and commonly agreed on as a result of the training, follow-up technical assistance activities, both at the national and regional levels in Middle Eastern countries, will be organized over the course of the Global Initiative.
