Together we Europeans can defeat ISIS! Interview with Franco Roberti

How we defeated the terrorism of the Red Brigades in Italy. Italian Antimafia is a success story, so much so that nowadays the Antimafia prosecutor’s office is also responsible for anti-terrorism. Is there complicity between our countries and Islamic terrorism?

Giuseppe Scognamiglio interviews Franco Roberti, National Antimafia and Anti-terrorism Prosecutor.

Giuseppe Scognamiglio: In the fight against the mafia, our country is setting the benchmark, we are at the cutting edge. Is there anything else that we could be doing to build on this success and the good work to contrast mafia activity in recent years?

Franco Roberti: We have a regulatory framework and investigative experience that is very important in contrasting mafia activity. A regulatory framework that, unfortunately, other countries do not have, not even those of the European Union and this lack of harmony in the set up of the EU is a serious limitation when, for example, we are tracking mafia capital abroad. More generally, there are many difficulties in investigations connected to countries where the systems differ from our own even though things have been improving recently thanks to supranational regulations implemented at member state level. I’m thinking, for example, of the joint European investigative teams. Therefore, the regulatory tools are very slowly moving closer together. Now, unfortunately we are seeing the withdrawal of the United Kingdom from compliance with the principles of the Palermo Convention against organized crime and this is serious because the United Kingdom risks becoming the top destination for illegal capital if we are unable to dialogue easily with the British authorities. The experience in fighting mafia activity, though, has served us well in the fight against terrorism.

In the 1980s the emergence of terrorism in Italy benefited organised crime, polarizing the state’s attention to counter terrorism. Organised crime became stronger and it was exactly at that time the Riina became Riina, the Corleonese became the Corleonese and began to traffic drugs to the US because the state wasn’t paying enough attention to them. The great success of the Palermo Antimafia pool of prosecutors, including Falcone, Chinnici and Borsellino, was to bring back the focus of attention onto Cosa Nostra. Everything began in Palermo. With the first Maxi Trial that concluded in 1987 thanks to the collaboration of Tomasso Buscetta and other informers: it drew a line in the sand. Cosa Nostra was an international criminal organization with its tentacles reaching almost everywhere, it operated at every level, even on an economic-financial level and it had external accomplices that were very strong. Also confirmed by the heads of Cosa Nostra were the relationships with politicians and the business world. All of this took place in the mid 80s and then became progressively confirmed by the successive investigations for the Maxi Trial. The National Antimafia Prosecutor’s Office was set up in 1992 at the behest of Giovanni Falcone, who would have almost certainly become its first chief had he not been assassinated. Perhaps he was killed in order to prevent him from becoming National Prosecutor. Giovanni Falcone’s idea for the National Prosecutor was as an office for the coordination and investigation to promote and increase the effectiveness of the most important investigations. The National Antimafia Prosecutor’s office has performed this task well. I can say so because I have been in charge of it for three years and I have belonged to it for eight years as a replacement. We have performed so well in this task of coordination and investigation that the legislators, the government and parliament, last year extended our remit to include the coordination of anti-terrorism. This acknowledgement of the competence of the National Antimafia Prosecutor’s office, also concerning terrorism, arose precisely from the operational affinity between dealing with the mafia and terrorism. They are different phenomena: the mafia has no creed other than that of making money: terrorism has a very strong ideology that is transnational and apocalyptic. They are different phenomena, however, on an operational level they often cross paths. We know that international terrorism finances itself also through organised criminal activities such as extortion, drug trafficking, smuggling of Iraqi oil and money laundering. I would say, therefore, that international terrorism is a form of transnational criminality comparable to organised crime and it must be countered with the same operational tools that we have developed for mafia organizations, tools that are being progressively perfected.

GS: So, it seems that the famous phrase used by Giovanni Falcone “Follow the money” is still true today…

FR: Only by exhausting the coffers of the mafia, just as with terrorism, it is possible to diminish the power of these organizations. It is the financial input that moves criminal actions: terrorists need money for logistical support, for weapons, to corrupt … They need money and by taking this away from them, you deprive them of the key operative tool. This is even more true in the case of the mafia, whose purpose is money making; our objective must be to remove illicit wealth from the organization.

GS: On terrorism I believe that you have said clearly that, since the Paris attacks, the exchange of information between intelligence agencies has improved….

FR: There is always the risk of slipping back into old habits. However, there was a reaction!

GS: And what can you tell me about the financing of terrorism, which, according to some commentators, has some western involvement?

FR: The channels for financing terrorism are infinite! Think of the finance from Saudi Arabia for Wahabi and Sunni groups with the sole purpose of countering the Shia. All of this money has, in some way, finished up in the hands of Islamic State because Isis is a Sunni- Wahabi group. Let’s be clear, not all Salafi and Wahabi are terrorists but all terrorists are Salafi and Wahabi and, therefore, there is an umbilical cord…

GS: How can we break up these circuits of funding? Is this up to you prosecutors? Governments?

FR: No, this is a big political problem. For example, if, and I don’t know if this is still the case, Turkey has offered support to foreign fighters in Syria, we can’t say that the Turkish government finances terrorism. We have a good dialogue with Turkey but we cannot deny that Turkey has offered, during a certain phase of the conflict, logistical support to the Foreign Fighters, you see? The countries involved, first of all, must counter these forms of finance.

We defeated the domestic terrorists in Italy! We haven’t yet defeated the mafia, but the terrorists yes, because we isolated them from the context of civil society. All of the criminal, terrorist and mafia organizations always have a grey area of complicity and facilitation. Fortunately, terrorism has been isolated and for this reason, defeated. But it was isolated mainly by politics, the whole of politics without distinction built a wall against terrorism. This is a key point.

GS: A part of the money reaches terrorists via bank transfers: what is the structure to intercept this? The Ministry of the Interior?

FR: Of course the Ministry of the Interior, the police forces… Through money transfer mechanisms we see money transfers, which often end up in the hands of individuals connected to terrorists or directly in the hands of terrorists. We are unearthing networks of relationships that could lead us to an as yet undiscovered criminal network. Fortunately, there haven’t been any terrorist attacks in our country. The networks of relationships based on money transfers can also trace individuals indicated as terrorists and involved in attacks, such as in Paris last November. They exist, we have catalogued them, they are the focus of investigations…

GS: To break up the financial flows to support ISIS, what is the Italian Ministry of the Interior doing together with ministries form other countries?

FR: First of all, the police forces make the initial investigations and then the magistrate coordinates them and directs them. Together with colleagues from other countries we have created a positive instrument that is working well, involving the immediate exchange of information also through Eurojust. The information circulates, but then it is necessary to activate investigations. What we do at the National Prosecutor’s office is exactly this: we acquire information, we collect it, we analyse it with our database and we use it to launch investigations. We enable the district prosecutors to carry out investigations, to reach the networks of relationships, to carry out telephone interceptions.

GS: So, if it is discovered that finance is reaching ISIS from a determinate source and we want to break it up, we are able to do so today?

FR: Absolutely. There has been a 100% increase in notifications of suspect operations of financing from the territory. We have a mechanism to counter money laundering and financing of terrorism based on a system of notifications of suspect operations that reaches us from the banks and from the financial system: every time that a bank detects a suspect operation or a potential case of money laundering or funding of terrorism it must notify the UIF (Financial Information Unit for Italy), which can then send it on to us through the two police channels (which are the Antimafia Investigation Directorate and the Special Nucleus of the Financial Guard Currency Police) and then we analyse the information. We have created this system of immediate analysis in real time, the SOS (Notification of Suspect Operations), thanks to which the number notifications is rising. The complete and timely circulation of this information is the result of an Italian historical political sensibility, which can be exported across the European Union, but which concerns also Russia, the US and the whole world.

GS: For example, some researchers tell us that some purchases of oil from Syria and Libya can be transformed, through overbilling, into forms of funding for terrorism. Is this true?

FR: These are theories that would need to be corroborated by investigations…

GS: Comparing the situation with that of two years ago, today we are much more effective, we have interrupted numerous cases of terrorist funding…

FR: We would like to do even more. It is necessary to fight the funding of terrorism and we are making every effort to multiply the lines of enquiry…

GS: Let me ask a question that you do not have to answer. The difficulties of being more incisive in interrupting the traffic, is this because of Western complicity?

FR: I don’t know. I know that there are objective operational difficulties because not all systems are the same: different juridical systems, different operational procedures, police systems that operate differently. I was saying before that the joint investigative teams will be important when they enter into operations because there will be police officers from different countries directed by a public ministry. Getting police forces to work together means developing a shared joint operational procedure that can help in the long term to create a standardised system. But everything works well only if there is international cooperation and an exchange of information that not only involves the countries of the European Union! Why have we also made agreements with Belgrade and with Kosovo with Bosnia Herzegovina, Albania and Slovenia? Because everything passes through this corridor! We could just be satisfied with Eurojust and the EU countries but Eurojust risks becoming an empty box unless it is fed information. Feeding the system of information circulation is hard work, but it is fundamental.

GS: So, let’s see if I can sum up your message for our readers: we are making great efforts to improve international coordination. European coordination is extremely important but it is not sufficient.

FR: Necessary but not sufficient…

GS: …and we must, therefore, aim for the widest possible collaboration, ideally on a global level!

FR:…and an effective coordination between countries genuinely involved to counter the phenomenon of international terrorism. We know that some countries have had a rather ambiguous attitude! After which, everyone must do their own duty: we do ours as prosecutors. We try to provide a small contribution towards making the system work…

GS: In the end it doesn’t seem to be a small contribution at all. It is fundamental to improve international collaboration. Therefore, your initiatives to create alliances are essential in order to guarantee results.

FR: We fully believe in these agreements with the Serbs, with the Balkan area, so much so that we have written to the Italian ministries of justice and foreign affairs, requesting the addition of a point on Justice and Security on the agenda of the Balkan Forum due to take place in Rome next year.

GS: Many diplomats were here to listen to you speak…

FR: Justice and Security are fundamental! The idea is to transform this agreement into a permanent conference, therefore, a location separate from the meetings between states. We would like to create a mechanism for communication between prosecutors, a level lower down, if you like, but more operative and more tangible. But where do we run aground? It’s a problem of economics. We are not able to organize the Balkan conference with all 12 countries that signed our agreement as we do not have the funds to do so! So we need someone that has the possibility to organize. It may seem simple but it’s like this. The permanent conference, however, is important. It’s fundamental! But this lies beyond our organizational and financial resources.

GS: Prosecutor, thank you and good luck from our readers!

FR: Thank you.

@GiuScognamiglio