Tripoli, 18 October:
Officials from the Interior Ministry met with a team from the Libyan Interpol office on Tuesday to discuss the . . .[restrict]implementation of an EU-funded project to rebuild the effectiveness of the Libyan police.
Code-named RELINC (Rebuilding Libya’s Investigative Capability), the project aims to help the police re-establish their ability to identify security threats and investigate criminal and terrorist activity. With a budget €2.2 million given by the EU, the 18-month project, implemented in cooperation with Interpol, started on 1 September.
It is a response to Libyan and international concerns that the country’s transition to democracy could be threatened by terrorism and organised crime — trafficking in weapons, drugs, and human beings which generate violence and threaten to destabilise both the country and the region. In talks with the Europeans, the Libyan authorities identified a much stronger operational capability to identify security threats as the immediate priority.
The head of the Libya’s national central bureau of Interpol, Abdulhamid Elghazali, has been reported by the Libyan News Agency saying that the project consists of seven components:
- Assessing threats posed to Libya by transnational organised crime and terrorism, to support the Libyan government and police in identifying strategic enforcement objectives;
- Initiating the building, within the Libyan police’s Criminal Investigation Department (CID), of a sustainable operational Crime Analysis Unit;
- Advising the CID to take full operational advantage of the support provided by the future Crime Analysis Unit;
- Reinforcing the capacity of the Interpol National Central Bureau in Tripoli to make optimal use of the Interpol network and policing tools;
- Establishing remote access to Interpol databases in key Libyan law enforcement bodies and at strategic border crossing points;
- Building a prototype police criminal database within police headquarters to enable the Libyan police to efficiently store and share criminal information;
- Raising the awareness of and training the Libyan police on the international police cooperation tools and mechanisms provided by Interpol.
A more ambitious €10-million project on security sector reform and rule of law is scheduled to start in early 2013.
The projects result from a meeting in March at Interpol’s headquarters in Lyon between Interior Minister Fawzi Abdulal and Interpol Secretary General Ronald K. Noble at which they discussed ways the international police body could help Libya tackle crime. [/restrict]
