The European Union (EU) Council has adopted a Decision which will see the EU’s on-going military mission against maritime piracy off the coast of Somalia use INTERPOL’s global network and tools to fight the criminal networks behind piracy in the Gulf of Aden.


Under EU Council Decision 2010/766/CFSP passed on 7 December, information on suspected maritime pirates collected by members of the EU’s Operation ATALANTA, such as fingerprints, nominal information and identification documents, as well as details of equipment used by the suspects, will be provided to INTERPOL for checking against its global databases with a view to facilitating the identification and traceability of suspects, as well as their prosecution.


The EU Decision follows last month’s United Nations Security Council Resolution 1950 (2010) calling on all UN 192 member countries to work with INTERPOL and Europol to fight criminal networks involved in maritime piracy off the coast of Somalia. Collaboration between INTERPOL and Europol in information exchange and analysis of piracy related material has already resulted in the identification of links between a number of cases and individuals based on DNA, fingerprint and telephone analysis.