General Report on the Proceedings of the Fourth Workshop and the Main Recommendations
"Terrorist Organizations and their Formation"
First: Main items of the workshop.
1. Ways of cooperation between countries to dismantle terrorist organizations and movements and prevent the recruiting, training and incitement of terrorists.
2. Deny them the use of other countries and secure areas.
3. Improve intelligence sharing.
4. Cooperate in the field of the police force, passports and the fight against terrorism.
5. Prevent the abuse of human rights and asylum laws to protect terrorists.
6. Exchange information on individuals and groups involved in carrying up terrorists acts or in potential terrorist recruiting and training.
7. Dismantle and deny the use of training camps and save havens.
8. Differentiate between legitimate religious, political, charitable and educational activities and the prevision of training and financing terrorism.
9. Make sure that religious and educational facilities are not misused or profaned. 10. Establish an international black list of the most wanted individuals.
11. Share information on members well-known to terrorist organizations.
12. Warn and enlighten parents and teachers.
13. Monitor educational and youth-related activities.
14. Prevent the misuse of voluntary and civil organizations and dismantle smoke screen organizations.
15. Lay down international criteria on tracking down terrorists and extremists and their collective activities, on fingerprints collection and other means to easily identify the suspects and actual perpetrators without causing an embarrassment to the legitimate and ordinary travelers.
16. Improve information sharing in respect of tracking down and warning so that the information will be retrieved in virtual times. Second: Countries and Organizations participating in the workshop: France, China, India, Holland, Morocco, the Philippines, Iraq, Sri Lanka, South Africa, Bahrain, Uzbekistan, Australia, Jordan, Greece and Interpol Organization. Third: Workshop sessions:
The first session:
Three countries namely, France, India and China took the floor. They led the discussion on the composition of the terrorist organizations, warning against their danger and their spread worldwide and stressing the importance and the need for developing a strategy based on collective international, regional and bilateral cooperation to fight terrorism.
These countries were unanimous to point out that the spread of terrorism and development of its means and activities makes it essential for the countries to step up their efforts and give an overriding priority to fighting terrorist organizations under all forms and guises.
The terrorist organizations have in fact penetrated the developing countries where they have shifted their tactics moving from the hard formula to the soft one to carry out terrorist acts. And in order to adapt to the new circumstances they resorted to dismantling those organizations and turned them into smaller groups that operate under the umbrella of legal entities such as charitable organizations so that it would be difficult to identify or track them down.
Second session:
The Chairman opened the session by requesting the participants in the workshop to submit a brief report on terrorist organizations and compositions, ways and means of dealing with them and dismantling them according to the experience of every single country.
Jordan, Bahrain, Morocco and Australia presented their respective experience and the measures they have initiated to fight terrorism.
At the outset, the delegate of Jordan reviewed the state of terrorist organizations, the most prominent of which is alQaeda, which exploits the economic and living conditions of some sections of society to recruit, train and spread its ideology among them. He emphasized that terrorists used forged passports from one country to another, a situation requiring that this issue be
seriously addressed.
The delegate of Morocco, in his paper, reviewed the terrorist organizations present in Morocco. He said that these organizations targeted public and private installations and security authorities realized that the purpose of terrorism was to change the government in order to overthrow the government and establish an Islamic caliphate system. He pointed out that there were two
terrorist movements in Morocco: the first is Slafiya Jihadiya, regarded as belonging to the destructive tendencies that adopts violence to achieve political objectives; that movement sees al Arab leaders as disbelievers and democracy as a set of alien ideas that are not compatible with Islamic societies. The second movement is the Moroccan Islamic Jihad Group which was founded in Sudan in 1995 and
is made up of a group of Moroccans who fought in Afghanistan and now live in Europe enjoying freedom of movement.
The delegate of Bahrain reviewed in his paper the need to find effective and efficient means of combating terrorism. He said that his country supports the initiative of HRH the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia calling for the establishment of an international counter-terrorism center, and that as a complement to initiative, the Kingdom of Bahrain proposes the establishment in the countries of the Gulf Cooperation Council of specialized national counter-terrorism centers to be linked with a unified center for GCC countries, that would occupy its place in the international security system and serve as a focal point with the international center. He said that that it was possible to develop a unified center to become the nucleus of the GCC police and to strengthen its capability to study and analyze its information about organized and international crime. The Kingdom of Bahrain expressed its welcomed to host the headquarters of the GCC center.
Under comments on the proposal of Saudi Arabia "inviting the Interpol to compile a unified list of terrorists…), delegates of Morocco, France, India and South Africa expressed their views that the Interpol's efforts are based on investigation, inspection as well as on legal and judicial measures, and so is unable to accept the legal responsibility of compiling a unified list of
wanted persons. The delegate of India asked whether the Interpol is the appropriate agency to draw up the unified list of terrorists. He proposed that the international institutions should be encouraged and developed to deal with this issue in a manner not in conflict with the sovereignty of states.
The delegate of France said that the question of information exchange about terrorists and wanted individuals has achieved progress at both bilateral and multilateral levels, which is a foundation for counter-terrorism. He proposed to encourage the development of effective information exchange between states engaged in combating terrorism so that they may be on constant alert and effective in dealing with this issue, because terrorist cells have started to operate globally.
The representative of the Moroccan delegation pointed out that, after 16 May events in Casablanca, the Parliament adopted to combat terrorism, classify terrorist acts and punishments and to unify efforts and peoples authorities to enforce them and give security agencies wide-scale powers to track terrorists. He said that a number of terrorist leaders have actually been arrested and brought to justice, and that this law could be useful in this forum.
The delegate of Jordan said that from experience there was need to create a list of materials used in terrorist operations such as chemical materials and put in place laws to regulate their purchase, importation and exportation. The French delegate agreed with the delegate of Jordan on the need to create systems for the exchange of names, places, and factories manufacturing chemical materials used by terrorists. The delegate of India also supported the matter, especially the inclusion of chemical substances used at homes and which can be changed attack substances and that caution should be exercised in this matter because terrorists would opt for alternative materials for use in their operations. The delegate of Australia spoke about the experience of his country in combating terrorist organizations, stressing that the efforts of his country focus on fighting terrorism in South East Asia after the incident of Bali in Indonesia. He also stressed the global nature of Al-Qaeda. Australia has signed 9 memoranda of understanding with Asia pacific countries and is negotiating with many countries in the world. As part of these programs, Australia has given ten million dollars to Indonesia and half of that to the Philippines within the framework of the Australian Counter-terrorism Program.
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