Interview of Mich&egrave;le CONINSX, President of Eurojust, in the EP in Brussels, after the meeting of the Committee on Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs&nbsp;on foreign fighters

Brussels

Committee on Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs

fight against terrorism (T)

CONINSX, Michèle (BE)

interview

Eurojust

Foreign fighters: interview of Michèle CONINSX, President of Eurojust

SOUNDBITE (English), Mich&#232;le CONINSX, President of Eurojust, I think that you need to give time to the time and I think that is our concern because we don t have time, and we just did a huge effort during the last ten years to get the anti-terrorism prosecutors talking to each other , exchanging information in real time and exchanging also best practices and lessons learned. We have been asked to ensure international judicial cooperation. In the Brussels attack we were all active and in the Paris attacks.

SOUNDBITE (English), Mich&#232;le CONINSX, President of Eurojust , For instance at the moment of Brussels attack, it took us a half an hour to get in touch with all the national correspondent on the anti-terrorism and prosecutors. We were dealing on the operational level with the terrorism cases in half an hour, that means that actually we are making progress but of course if you are in the middle of a criminal investigation, in the middle of a prosecution you need to concentrate in your own thing. And get all the evidence in a smoothest and the fastest way possible and then in the second stage you start to concentrate on international cooperation and the links with other countries. But in first place you focus on what happens in your won territory and that is exactly what intelligence and police services in Belgium together with the judiciary have been doing. So give time to the time in a certain context.

SOUNDBITE (English), Mich&#232;le CONINSX, President of Eurojust , And a complicated problem cannot be fixed in a simple way. so you have different degrees of measures that should be taken and there are two different aspects in your question how to de-radicalize in an early stage possible in the communities, in the early stage possible, how to avoid that people are travelling and going back and forth to Syria and Iraq, how to keep trace with the returnees and how to be sure once we are tackling are the once we should be kept in the judicially field.

SOUNDBITE (English), Mich&#232;le CONINSX, President of Eurojust , And if there are not the heart cores and the veterans we absolutely have to take care for. In justice context what do you do with the medium level of dangerous returnees and the once who come back are simply traumatized and out of hope and perspective.  So what we have to do is to think about the de-radicalization and rehabilitation programs and different stages of the criminal investigation and prosecutions Also look after diversion from prosecutions and alternative sections. That is on your question related to de-radicalization.  

SOUNDBITE (English), Mich&#232;le CONINSX, President of Eurojust , And the top of it how do you go after evidence, digital evidence in a world which is globalized and which is characterised by communication and social media trough internet where the terrorists especially are using coded messages , encrypted messages. And where you have of course your territorial competence, your territorial law, operating within the rule of law, you have to obey the rule of law. You have the confession of Budapest, you have of course flora where you can meet in between cyber-crime and terrorist prosecutors. And that is exactly what we are working on. Leasing with the United States, trying to have direct and immediate access to digital evidence and content data, transcription data, another important data in real time.