JENSEN LA VENDE

Se­nior Re­porter

jensen.lavende@guardian.co.tt

The seizure of near­ly 157 tonnes of il­lic­it drugs, more than 490 ar­rests and the dis­man­tling of dozens of transna­tion­al crim­i­nal net­works dur­ing a nine-month in­ter­na­tion­al op­er­a­tion have re­in­forced the need for coun­tries to strength­en co­op­er­a­tion in the fight against or­gan­ised crime, Caribbean se­cu­ri­ty of­fi­cials say.

The suc­cess of Op­er­a­tion AT­LAS NEXUS, which in­volved 35 coun­tries, high­light­ed the grow­ing pres­ence of transna­tion­al crim­i­nal net­works in the re­gion and the need for con­tin­ued uni­fied ac­tion against them.

The op­er­a­tion was joint­ly co­or­di­nat­ed by the Eu­ro­pean Mul­ti­dis­ci­pli­nary Plat­form Against Crim­i­nal Threats (EM­PACT), FRON­TEX and Cari­com Im­pacs, with sup­port from the Eu­ro­pean Union’s EL PAC­C­TO 2.0 pro­gramme. The ini­tia­tive con­clud­ed in Sep­tem­ber af­ter bring­ing to­geth­er se­cu­ri­ty, cus­toms and ju­di­cial au­thor­i­ties from Eu­rope, Latin Amer­i­ca and the Caribbean.

Speak­ing at a meet­ing on Thurs­day, ex­ec­u­tive di­rec­tor of the Caribbean Com­mu­ni­ty Im­ple­men­ta­tion Agency for Crime and Se­cu­ri­ty (Cari­com Im­pacs), Col Michael Jones, said drug seizures in the re­gion had moved from grammes to tonnes.

He added that au­thor­i­ties al­so con­fis­cat­ed 201 firearms, 3,100 rounds of am­mu­ni­tion, ex­plo­sives and mil­lions of dol­lars worth of crim­i­nal as­sets, and res­cued 18 vic­tims of hu­man traf­fick­ing, in­clud­ing one from the Caribbean.

“This par­tic­u­lar il­lic­it com­mod­i­ty, for me, strikes home the most be­cause where all the oth­er il­lic­it com­modi­ties are ex­pend­ables ... you snort co­caine, it dis­ap­pears. You fire a round of am­mu­ni­tion, you have to re­peat it, but when you ex­ploit peo­ple, es­pe­cial­ly chil­dren, the way how these guys think, it’s a com­mod­i­ty that keeps on giv­ing, and that re­al­ly stress­es the im­por­tance of the work that you’re do­ing there,” Jones said.

Al­so speak­ing at the event was Pelayo Cas­tro Zuzuar­regui, deputy man­ag­ing di­rec­tor for the Eu­ro­pean Ex­ter­nal Ac­tion Ser­vice (EEAS), who said ad­dress­ing transna­tion­al crime re­quires a uni­fied re­sponse.

“In Trinidad, your se­cu­ri­ty is our se­cu­ri­ty. So when we speak and when we look at this chal­lenge from Eu­rope, the chal­lenge of or­gan­ised crime, il­lic­it traf­fick­ing, it is a shared re­spon­si­bil­i­ty, it is a shared threat.”

Cas­tro added that crim­i­nals un­der­stand some­thing that law en­force­ment failed to com­pre­hend for some time: the pow­er of net­work­ing.

Per­ma­nent Sec­re­tary in the Min­istry of Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty, Dr Wil­son Hen­der­son Jr, echoed the po­si­tion, say­ing transna­tion­al crim­i­nal groups ex­ploit in­ter­na­tion­al trade routes, tech­nol­o­gy and dif­fer­ences be­tween le­gal sys­tems, mean­ing a co­or­di­nat­ed re­sponse is re­quired.

The min­istry not­ed that, for small is­land states such as Trinidad and To­ba­go, re­gion­al and in­ter­na­tion­al co­op­er­a­tion is crit­i­cal be­cause or­gan­ised crime threat­ens pub­lic safe­ty, eco­nom­ic sta­bil­i­ty and in­sti­tu­tion­al in­tegri­ty.

“Ad­dress­ing these chal­lenges re­quires more than ef­fec­tive na­tion­al law en­force­ment. It de­mands trust­ed part­ner­ships, time­ly in­tel­li­gence ex­change, co­or­di­nat­ed op­er­a­tional re­spons­es, and a shared com­mit­ment to strength­en­ing our se­cu­ri­ty across our re­spec­tive ju­ris­dic­tions.”