RIYADH, 7 February 2005 — Saudi Arabia has dramatically increased the flow of information it sends to Interpol on terrorism, drugs and organized crime suspects, Interpol chief Ronald Noble said here yesterday. He said the Kingdom has also posted a police officer to Interpol headquarters.
“For the Arab-speaking countries, if there’s one weakness I see in the world’s anti-terrorist efforts, it’s that not many countries in the world are able to treat or process messages that they receive in Arabic,” the Interpol chief told Reuters.
Noble said information that could help catch terrorists risks falling between the cracks because only about 10 countries are able to handle Arabic messages submitted by Middle Eastern states.
“There are messages that could contain valuable police information that are sitting in someone’s inbox not being processed or treated and therefore, from my perspective, should be viewed as ticking time-bombs,” Noble said on the sidelines of the Counterterrorism International Conference.
Interpol’s more than 180 worldwide members submit their information in English, French, Spanish or Arabic, its four official languages, and “in theory” are also able to process information they receive in any of those languages, he said.
“But the reality is far from theory. I would say that, outside of our Arab-speaking countries, maybe in the world there are 10 countries that regularly treat Arabic-language messages like they would English, Spanish or French.”
Noble said messages that were obviously of urgent, terrorist-related importance were immediately translated by Interpol into all four languages from its headquarters in Lyon, France. But more routine requests for information could go directly to member states in Arabic.
An Arab country might seek information on a suspect for money laundering or document fraud, Noble said in a hypothetical example. A Western country seeking the same suspect in a terrorism probe might fail to process the message and therefore miss the connection.
He said he could not point to any “smoking gun” episode where clear chances to thwart a terror attack had been missed.
To remedy the language issue, Noble said Interpol was talking to Arab countries about setting up a “sub-regional bureau” in the Middle East whose tasks would include translating police information from Arabic into other Interpol languages, and vice-versa. It would be up to Arab countries to decide where such a bureau should be based, he added.
