AI operation uncovered 126 terror suspects – INTERPOL

INTERPOL officials. CREDIT: INTERPOL website

An international counter-terrorism operation leveraging artificial intelligence has identified 126 suspected foreign terrorist fighters from over 108,000 facial images extracted from online jihadist content, the International Criminal Police Organisation has said.

The operation, in which Nigeria actively participated, was codenamed “Operation Shams II,” and held in Tunis, Tunisia.

According to a statement published on INTERPOL’s official website on Friday, the operation brought together 28 specialised officers and experts from Nigeria, Côte d’Ivoire, Ghana, Iraq, Kenya, Malaysia, the Philippines, Qatar, Tajikistan, Tunisia and Uzbekistan.

The international police organisation stated that the initiative was designed to disrupt terrorist networks and their financing in the digital domain.

“Law enforcement officers extracted 108,076 facial images from visual content published by jihadist groups during the five-day operation.

“Artificial intelligence agents and AI-generated scripts were subsequently deployed to automate data collection and investigative processes, including deduplication and quality assessment.

“The technology reduced the dataset to 6,362 unique, high-quality facial images, which were processed through INTERPOL’s facial recognition system,” the statement said.

INTERPOL stressed that the AI-generated results were reviewed and verified by trained officers and analysts in compliance with its data processing rules.

It noted that additional intelligence supplied by its National Central Bureau in Baghdad, Iraq, included hundreds of images linked to terrorism suspects.

“To date, 126 Foreign Terrorist Fighters have been identified from the images processed during Operation Shams II,” the organisation said.

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INTERPOL stated that the matches would enrich existing intelligence on the suspects, including information regarding their potential locations and social networks.

The data is currently being integrated into INTERPOL’s databases to support global efforts to detect, track and disrupt the cross-border movement of terrorist suspects.

The organisation added that investigative leads generated during the operation were already supporting judicial proceedings in participating countries, including a case involving two suspected foreign terrorist fighters currently in detention.

“Thousands of additional images remain to be processed and are expected to yield further investigative leads. Beyond facial recognition, the operation deployed cutting-edge cryptocurrency-tracing tools to investigate terrorist financing.

“This financial investigation led to three urgent requests to a Virtual Asset Service Provider to disclose customer data aimed at disrupting illicit funding flows.

“Participating countries also engaged representatives of the online gaming industry to address concerns regarding youth radicalisation in virtual environments,” the statement added.

INTERPOL’s Director of Counter-Terrorism, María Carmen Muñoz González, said the operation demonstrated the power of combining international police cooperation with responsible AI-assisted analysis.

“The success of Operation Shams II demonstrates the value of combining international law enforcement cooperation with responsible AI-assisted analytical capabilities,” she said.

She added that the model could serve as a benchmark for future operations against criminal networks.

Operation Shams II was conducted under the CT TECH+ Project, funded by the European Union’s Foreign Policy Instruments and supported by the United Nations Office of Counter-Terrorism.