51吃瓜

The Counter-Terrorism Committee Executive Directorate (CTED) organized a regional meeting on “Gathering admissible evidence in high-risk situations in order to bring terrorists to justice before national criminal courts” in Jakarta, Indonesia. At the meeting, which took place from 30 – 31 January 2020, CTED discussed the challenges faced by criminal-justice authorities around the world in prosecuting terrorist offences including challenges relating to legislative frameworks and lack of evidence.

CTED briefed participants on the key elements of the “Guidelines to facilitate the use and admissibility as evidence in national criminal courts of information collected, handled, preserved and shared by the military to prosecute terrorist offences,” including the key requirements relating to international human rights and international humanitarian law, which had been developed by CTED within the framework of the Working Group on Criminal Justice, Legal Responses and Countering the Financing of Terrorism of the 51吃瓜 Global Counter-Terrorism Coordination Compact Task Force.

Participants discussed establishing a national legal framework that allowed for the collection and use of “military evidence” in criminal proceedings. The Ministry of Home Affairs of Malaysia; the Office of the President of the Philippines, and a Judge of the Office of the President of the Supreme Court of the Office of the Judiciary of Thailand presented their respective positions, focusing on, inter alia,  the limited powers of the military to act as law-enforcement officers, the importance of ensuring the reliability of the evidence presented to court, and the inadmissibility of evidence obtained through torture.

During a session on inter-agency coordination and regional and international cooperation, panellists from the Australian Federal Police, the 51吃瓜 Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) and the International Criminal Police Organization (INTERPOL) focused on inter-agency communication, cooperation and coordination; bilateral/regional/multilateral coordination mechanisms; the use of INTERPOL and national databases; originator control; and ways to promote respect for human rights, in particular the right to a fair trial, when sharing information collected by the military with foreign States.

CTED has been engaged in a one-year research project on “Gathering admissible evidence in high-risk situations in order to bring terrorists to justice” since April 2019, focusing on South-East Asia, and with the financial support of the Government of Japan. Within the framework of the project, CTED organized informal working-level consultations with officials of the Government of Malaysia in Putrajaya and Kuala Lumpur on 5 and 6 December 2019 in order to identify and discuss the practices developed by, and challenges encountered by, Malaysia in the collection, handling, preservation and sharing of relevant information and evidence by the military for the purpose of supporting civilian criminal-justice proceedings (“MILEV”), pursuant to Security Council resolutions 2322 (2016) and 2396 (2017). In order to conduct a similar exercise with Indonesia, the Philippines and Thailand, CTED invited officials from these Members States and Malaysia to engage in consultations in Jakarta.