GEISHA KOW­LESSAR-ALON­ZO

Se­nior Re­porter

geisha.kow­lessar@guardian.co.tt

The Eu­ro­pean Union’s Di­rec­tor for the Amer­i­c­as, Pelayo Cas­tro, has called for deep­er co­op­er­a­tion be­tween Eu­rope, T&T and the wider Caribbean to com­bat in­creas­ing­ly so­phis­ti­cat­ed transna­tion­al crim­i­nal net­works, warn­ing that or­gan­ised crime, drug traf­fick­ing and cor­rup­tion have be­come shared chal­lenges that no coun­try can tack­le alone.

In an in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, Cas­tro high­light­ed the suc­cess of At­las Nexus, a ma­jor in­ter­na­tion­al law en­force­ment op­er­a­tion that brought to­geth­er au­thor­i­ties from 35 coun­tries in an un­prece­dent­ed ef­fort to dis­man­tle crim­i­nal or­gan­i­sa­tions op­er­at­ing across con­ti­nents.

He said prepa­ra­tions for the op­er­a­tion took two years and in­volved more than 800 law en­force­ment of­fi­cials un­der the lead­er­ship of the Bel­gian Fed­er­al Po­lice, sup­port­ed by Eu­ro­pean se­cu­ri­ty agen­cies and in­ter­na­tion­al part­ners.

The op­er­a­tion re­sult­ed in the ar­rest of more than 500 crim­i­nals, in­clud­ing high-val­ue tar­gets, and the seizure of more than 150 tonnes of co­caine.

How­ev­er, Cas­tro stressed that the ini­tia­tive was about much more than drugs.

“This is about dis­man­tling net­works, be­cause this is what we need to do. If you on­ly seize drugs, but the net­works con­tin­ue to op­er­ate, that is not very ef­fi­cient. We need to dis­man­tle those net­works,” he said.

He de­scribed At­las Nexus as a clear ex­am­ple of the pow­er of in­ter­na­tion­al co­op­er­a­tion and said it demon­strat­ed how Eu­ro­pean and Caribbean se­cu­ri­ty agen­cies could work to­geth­er to tar­get the struc­tures that sus­tain or­gan­ised crime.

Cas­tro warned that the grow­ing links be­tween crim­i­nal or­gan­i­sa­tions in Latin Amer­i­ca, the Caribbean and Eu­rope have trans­formed se­cu­ri­ty in­to a glob­al is­sue.

“As I’ve been say­ing dur­ing this vis­it, your prob­lem is my prob­lem, my prob­lem is your prob­lem. So this is a shared chal­lenge. We think we are safer to­geth­er,” he said.

Ac­cord­ing to Cas­tro, cit­i­zens’ se­cu­ri­ty and the fight against or­gan­ised crime have be­come pri­or­i­ties on the Eu­ro­pean Union’s diplo­mat­ic agen­da, re­flect­ing grow­ing con­cerns about the im­pact of crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty on both sides of the At­lantic.

“The gangs and crime or­gan­i­sa­tions in the re­gion con­nect with crime or­gan­i­sa­tions in Eu­rope. But at the end of the day, the vi­o­lence, the cor­rup­tion, the drugs end up in the streets of this re­gion and in the streets of Eu­rope,” he added.

Cas­tro not­ed that while crime and se­cu­ri­ty fre­quent­ly dom­i­nate head­lines in T&T, sim­i­lar con­cerns are in­creas­ing­ly shap­ing po­lit­i­cal dis­cus­sions across Eu­rope.

“I know that here se­cu­ri­ty is a first-page is­sue in the news­pa­pers, but in Eu­rope too,” Cas­tro said as he warned, “Ei­ther we work to­geth­er or we won’t be able to solve this very big chal­lenge.”

Look­ing ahead, Cas­tro iden­ti­fied bor­der man­age­ment, in­tel­li­gence shar­ing and law en­force­ment co­op­er­a­tion as ar­eas where the Eu­ro­pean Union and T&T could deep­en their col­lab­o­ra­tion.

Dur­ing his five-day vis­it, Cas­tro shared that he met with Min­is­ter of Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Roger Alexan­der to dis­cuss strength­en­ing ex­ist­ing part­ner­ships.

While prais­ing the progress al­ready made, Cas­tro main­tained that more work was need­ed to fur­ther tight­en re­gion­al se­cu­ri­ty co­op­er­a­tion.

“It is al­ready hap­pen­ing, but we need to do more,” he said as he em­pha­sised,“These di­a­logues are use­ful be­cause we can go in­to what it means each of the pro­grammes and how our part­ners can co­op­er­ate.”

He al­so added that emerg­ing threats such as cy­ber­crime and cy­ber­at­tacks are cre­at­ing new se­cu­ri­ty chal­lenges world­wide, mak­ing co­op­er­a­tion and in­for­ma­tion-shar­ing more im­por­tant than ever.