Crimping the terrorist threat

Gwyn Winfield looks at Project CRIMP, Interpol’s project to combat potential chemical terrorists in Iraq

Since 2010 Interpol’s CBRN sub directorate has been working around the world with specialist law enforcement officers to try and combat individuals that would use weapons of mass destruction for criminal or terrorist acts. The nexus of global criminality, spread of foreign fighters, the accessibility of CBRNE materials and the need for complex cross-governmental approaches to any CBRN attacks means that there is a serious issue to grapple with. The sub directorate revolves around three distinct teams dealing with the prevention of bioterrorism, radiological and nuclear terrorism, and chemical and explosive terrorism. Each unit has a current or retired senior law enforcement officer and is staffed with other law enforcement individuals and subject matter experts. A UK law enforcement officer, David Hargreaves, is a chemical and explosive prevention lead, who gave a presentation on Project CRIMP at the 5th CBRN Safety and Security Conference in Baghdad.

The chemical risk identification and mitigation programme (CRIMP) is part of a stable of projects within Interpol’s sub directorate. These include: Oleander (coordination table top exercise); Sapphire (biological threat assessment); BRC (current bio threats); Petrichor (cross border bio attacks); Chasm (chemically contaminated crime scenes); CCC (chemical security

Interpol works internationally to help eradicate organised crime and terrorism ©Interpol

for top officials), Rhino (West African project for improved coordination for bio attacks), Chase (chemical smuggling) and Litmus (early warning of chemical attacks). In addition to these they hold a wide variety of training and other workshops, as well as open source monitoring on CBRNE, a monthly digest of incidents, the Geiger and Watchmaker databases for radiological and bomb making activities. All this is done in conjunction with the local partner’s law enforcement community. Interpol does not tell, or mandate, what training needs to be done, but makes it available to all partners, and if a nation decides that it’s needed, Interpol can provide it as long as resources allow.

At the pointy end of the spear Interpol can, on request, provide operational support to any of its 194 member countries. On occasion it has helped with proactive operations targeting the illicit trafficking of CBRNE materials across borders, supplied an Interpol response team or the addition of CBRNE expertise to a pre-planned Interpol major event support team. For example, in 2014, Interpol coordinated and supported an operation conducted by the Moldovan authorities which resulted in the interception and seizure of 200gr (0.44lbs) of enriched uranium worth €1.6m on the black market. The successful operation led to the arrest of seven members of an organised criminal group who specialised in smuggling radioactive materials.

While Crimp is available to many nations, Mr Hargreaves and his team ran it in Iraq in March 2018 and 2019. He explained to the audience, about the work that Interpol does and how it coordinates with Iraq. “Interpol is the only global international policing body, we are not secret agents! Our whole aim is to encourage mutually beneficial relationships between law enforcement agencies and bring to justice those that wish us harm. Among the benefits is that each member country is connected by a national centre bureau, usually run by that country’s federal policing body, which in Iraq is the Iraqi police service. They are the link between the police officers in the field, and the information that comes back from investigations and terrorists, who do not respect boundaries. Crimes are often transnational. We share that information and connect all member countries via a secure network to progress investigations. We have a significant number of databases including on individuals, biometric forensic data like fingerprints and DNA, high quality photographs for ID, documentation on works of art and foreign terrorist fighters. Those are the ones that I consider relevant for law enforcement bodies in Iraq. We have 100m police records and do 19m searches a day.

“I run the chemical security programme and Crimp. This is a multiphase chemical security programme that has three aims. These are to identify chemicals most likely to cause risk to a country, to establish multiagency working groups and to propose sustainable countermeasures to support existing security practices to reduce risk. It is designed to add to existing security regimes. Despite excellent work in Iraq we know that terrorists exploit vulnerabilities, so it is only right that we review what we do and implement international best practice.

“During 2018 we delivered the first two phases of Crimp to a broad mix of delegates. We had the national centre bureau, huge supporters of Interpol, and we both provided a huge amount of two-way resources and support. The ministries of environment and the interior, the commission of customs, Brigadier Delli’s team in civil defence (see page 22), the directorates of explosive controls and criminal evidence, the federal intelligence and investigations agency, security services and the Iraq national monitoring agency (INMA) all took part over the two phases. In 2018 I also ran two specialist investigation courses dealing with contaminated crime scenes (Chasm) and crimes that cross international boundaries. We had many of the same agencies involved in both courses, this was important as it allowed us to build trust and confidence. We look at the chemicals of most concern to a country, and while all chemicals

In rare cases Interpol can deploy assets into country to deal with a major incident ©Interpol are dangerous a focus is necessary.

“The Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC) specifies 43 CWA and their precursors plus some discrete chemicals, like fluorine, that we should monitor. Iraq as a signatory to the CWC will already be monitoring them. Other law enforcement groups monitor additional databases. For example, the Australia group, which has 87 CW precursors. The Environmental Protection Act in Canada has 151 chemicals that they consider dangerous, India’s pollution control board monitors 708 chemicals, whereas the US monitors 86,000 chemicals under its toxic substance control act! That is all great, and these lists are detailed and comprehensive, but are they relevant to what Iraq uses, distributes or possesses? More importantly what are you seeing threat actors use in Iraq? We should focus the bulk of our endeavours on those chemicals that cause most risk to Iraqi nationals.” It’s an important consideration. Nations less touched by war and widespread terrorism don’t provide the same opportunities for terrorist chemical activity that Iraq does. When chemicals are safely locked up and monitored then the net has to be widened to find more exotic chemicals for nefarious purposes. If on the other hand, there is a super abundance of a dangerous chemical, why look further? By focussing on local threats Crimp can strip out the things that might happen, and instead drill into things that ‘will’ happen unless steps are taken. Sadly the local situation precluded Interpol from flying into Iraq to do the presentations locally. Instead both phases had to be done in a neighbouring country, Jordan, with the first phase taking place in the port of Aqaba and the second in the capital, Amman. While there is a certain amount of ‘getting to know you’ in Crimp workshops the desire is for the Interpol team to understand what the problems and issues are, and to get different groups to discuss them. Mr Hargreaves explained in his presentation how they do it: “We bring together a wide group of government, law enforcement, academic, industry and other stakeholders to develop a comprehensive picture of chemical risks and possible mitigation measures. One of the activities on

day one is to get each agency to stand up, and in turn say what they do, what their roles are in the field of chemical security and incident management. Often one agency will explain what they do, and then a second and third will chime up and say, ‘we do that as well!’ We saw it in Iraq and elsewhere. Because some agencies don’t talk to each other there is a lot of duplication and wasted effort.”

In addition to the classroom element in phase one there was a field trip to the port at Aqaba to walk through the facility and see the security and how they dealt with hazmat cargoes. Once Mr Hargreaves’ team has finished phase one they then put together a bespoke package for phase two, in which they focus their efforts on the lessons from the first phase. Mr Hargreaves explained further: “Where possible we brought in the same participants for phase two and talked about how we could further implement some of the best practices we had identified, which agencies could take charge and whether legislation existed that would make it work better. We brought in subject matter experts from places like the FBI, and took people to see the Jordanian police forensic lab, especially the ballistics and chemical analysis unit. At the time we did that Jordan’s previous head of counter terrorism had been assassinated and everything we saw was being used to identify the DNA and ballistic residue on the bullet that killed him.

“I look at what a customer does well so I can share it with other member countries, and in Iraq we found that some chemicals have security escorts, which is really good, as some of the chemicals that bad actors want are exported. This is good practice! Iraq also has a review of high hazard chemicals, and the multi ministry group, led by the INMA. Not all countries have these, so we can share the experience and ask, why aren’t you doing this?

“All representatives are tasked with identifying vulnerabilities, and what can be done to reduce them. One example mentioned was that in most places around the world fire and civil defence provide schoolchildren with fire awareness training, while in Iraq they add a bit about chemical security and counterradicalisation. It is a great way to make the youth of Iraq aware. We also did awareness raising on who does what, and this included things like why decontaminating people before they go into hospital is important. I sat with the directorate of explosive control and someone from the CBRN unit and we discussed homemade mortars with a CWA fill that had been used. We learnt that the explosive ordnance disposal guys deal with the explosive but not the chemical and the CBRN guys deal with the chemical and not the explosives. I suggested that they get together which seemed sinister at first, but because of the leadership from people like General Delli they started working together and are now well equipped to deal with such incidents. We also worked on test purchasing, where I go into a hardware store to see if I can purchase chemicals that if mixed correctly would make a good explosive. Often you need to educate the people working in these stores as they might not know these things.”

As was evident from many of the other presentations given at the conference, Iraq has a wide variety of chemical safety and security problems and some are significant. Working with partners like Interpol helps deal with some of them and following the Crimp work the Iraqi government moved to enhance those elements where there was best practice, like the school visits. It is not the case that having done this work Interpol moves on. There are other projects in the explosive, biological and radiological portfolios that could also help. A positive for Mr Hargreaves’ wider team is that there are likely to be some of the same staff working on those projects, meaning a cadre of officers that have a better understanding of how they can apply best practice. He suggested that it was important these lessons were taken on board: “Daesh is not dead, they’re merely sleeping, we must remain vigilant and [trust] that the mitigation measures we put in place are not forgotten, instead they are reviewed and refreshed.”