NEW YORK, 4 November 2005 — With 10 to 15 million stolen passports in use around the world at the present time, the global struggle against terrorism is seriously hampered, Interpol Secretary-General Ronald Noble said. It is imperative that all nations take the problem seriously, he said during a two-day visit here to inform the Counter-terrorism Committee of the UN Security Council of Interpol’s work since it opened an office here a year ago.
“If member countries treated stolen passports like citizens treat their stolen credit cards, then we would have many, many fewer terrorists and organized criminals in the world than we currently do,” Noble said.
The council in late July called for greater UN-Interpol cooperation and urged member states to promptly inform Interpol of any passports and travel documents reported lost or stolen. Noble said only 87 countries are participating in an Interpol database on stolen passports, while 100 others remain undecided. Since it was created three years ago when only 12 countries had signed on, he added, the database has gone from 3,000 to more than eight million entries. “Unless all countries share that information globally, the terrorists and organized criminals will be able to move from country to country,” Noble said.
“We know that in the first World Trade Center bombing in 1993, the person who did it, Ramzi Youssef, was in possession of a stolen Iraqi passport,” he said. “We know that the prime minister of Serbia (Zoran Djindjic) was assassinated (in 2003) by someone carrying a stolen Croatian passport that had been stamped 26 times by six European countries and by Singapore,” Noble said.
In cooperation with the United Nations, Interpol has sent three experts, including an analyst, to work with the investigation into the assassination of former Lebanese Premier Rafik Hariri in February, the Interpol chief said. The police organization is also helping track down the Mitsubishi truck that was stolen in Japan and filled with explosives used in the murder. Tokyo failed to notify Interpol of the vehicle theft, said Noble calling the failure “an opportunity lost to possibly disrupt that attack.”
“We submit that had that data been entered into the Interpol data base and had the Lebanese border control checked the data base as they frequently do, maybe that truck would have been prevented from getting into Lebanon,” he added.
Meanwhile, a former head of British intelligence said in remarks published in London that a chemical and biological terrorist attack was in prospect and a nuclear attack could not be ruled out in Britain.
Sir Richard Dearlove, who retired last year as head of the Secret Intelligence Service, said the July 7 bombings that killed 52 London commuters did not amount to a “strategic terrorist event,” the Daily Telegraph reported.
Dearlove, who was taking part in a debate on terrorism arranged by the London law firm Ashurst, said the July attacks on three subway trains and a bus “bore the characteristic of a locally planned and carried-out event.” However British officials probably had to conclude that “the clock is running on some much more dreadful events that could occur,” the former MI6 chief said.
Meanwhile, the Daily Mirror reported that all four July 7 suicide bombers were tracked by security services a year before they attacked London. But the surveillance operation was ditched after intelligence officers decided there was nothing suspicious about their behavior, according to sources.
