This initiative aims to target the movement of foreign terrorist fighters, their facilitators, and organized crime groups utilizing sea lanes, airports, and land borders.
In The Gambia, the event kicked off with a training session for The Gambia Police Force and Sister Services on December 11th at The Police Credit Union Conference Hall in Kanifing.
The mission’s primary objective is to fortify controls at major maritime ports, airports, and land borders across participating member countries. It seeks to locate and intercept individuals or groups engaged in cross-border crimes, including terrorism, migrant smuggling, human trafficking, arms trafficking, cash smuggling, drug trafficking, illicit distribution of precursor chemicals, components of Improvised Explosive Devices, vehicle theft, and other transnational crimes.
Commissioner of Police Prosecution Abdoulie Sanneh, representing The Inspector General of Police Abdoulie Sanyang, presided over the opening session, emphasizing the significance of the operation.
The operations aim to achieve the following results:
~ Enhance collaboration between law enforcement agencies and bolster information exchange among border security agencies, West African water security entities, and targeted Member States’ maritime borders.
~ Conduct systematic checks of individuals and their travel documents against INTERPOL and other national/regional databases at selected seaports, airports, and land borders for exits and entries.
~ Encourage the increased utilization of INTERPOL databases by member countries, thereby optimizing INTERPOL’s law enforcement capabilities to better monitor criminal movements.
~ Perform customs inspections of passengers, luggage, transportation, and vehicles at specified operational points to identify, confiscate, and neutralize cash, weapons, drugs, chemical precursors, and other materials used in the production of Improvised Explosive Devices
