Supported by the United States of America, the OSCE Secretariat’s Transnational Threats Department has promoted the creation of an expert group to train personnel from participating States in identifying potential foreign terrorist fighters and contrasting other cross-border crimes. The OSCE Mobile Training Team (MTT) established in 2016, consists of 12 operational border and counter-terrorism experts who are being deployed across the OSCE area to train border and law enforcement officers.
Together with other participating States (incl. Albania, Georgia, Greece, Montenegro, North Macedonia, Romania, and Türkiye) and Mediterranean Partners (Tunisia), Italy is taking part in the initiative with a highly qualified expert from the Border Police.
After a careful international selection process, MMT members were thoroughly trained by representatives of the United Nations Office of Counter-Terrorism, INTERPOL and Frontex as well as by a former FBI Special Agent, in order to deliver interactive training on the identification of cross-border movement by foreign terrorist fighters and other terrorism-related crimes. MMT experts can thus be deployed by the OSCE at the request of participating States to provide assistance on various topics, e.g. behavioural analysis and advanced interview techniques, tools and good practices in the identification of forged documents and foreign terrorist fighters at the borders, ways to combat illicit trafficking of small arms and light weapons, and gender vulnerabilities in the field of trafficking in human beings.
The participation in the initiative and the very high profile of the national expert, especially appreciated by the OSCE Secretariat, reaffirm Italy’s commitment in this area and more generally in the Organization’s politico-military dimension.