Workshop discusses plan to combat cyber crimes

A workshop on “Mutual Judicial Investigation and Assistance in Cyber Terrorism Financing Cases”, started here yesterday. The two-day workshop has been organised by the Ministry of Justice in co-operation with the US Department of Justice.The workshop, which is being held under the patronage of Minister of Justice and Acting Minister of State for Cabinet Affairs HE Dr Hassan Lahdan Saqr al-Mohannadi, features important issues related to financing e-terrorism in light of the national laws on the financing of terrorism and cyber-crime.The workshop also discusses the financing of terrorism, the prosecution of its financiers, the use of the Internet for terrorist purposes, the review of modern technological trends in the financing of terrorism and mutual legal assistance between the two countries.Addressing the opening session of the workshop, Director of the Legal and Judicial Studies Centre, Fatima Abdulaziz Bilal said this workshop comes within the framework of the State of Qatar’s commitment to strengthening international co-operation and increasing the effectiveness of efforts to combat the financing of terrorism, recognising that counter-terrorism requires collective and international action.In this context, she noted that the State of Qatar had signed many international conventions and memoranda of co-operation related to combating terrorism, the latest of which was the “Joint Convention against the Financing of Terrorism” signed by the State with the Government of the United States of America in July 2017.“Today’s terrorism is one of the most serious problems of the present century, if not the most serious one, and it shares this danger with war, famine, poverty and other problems at the global level,” she said. Fatima Bilal pointed out that daily financial flows through the international information network have become a major threat and are difficult to monitor “where they are used to finance terrorism, threatening the safety of life and property and undermining international peace and security.”With the increasing threat of terrorism at the regional and international levels, the United Nations adopted the International Convention for the Suppression of Financing of Terrorism in 1999, to strengthen judicial and security co-operation among states and to prevent and punish the financing of such acts, she added.She stressed that Qatar’s belief in the fight against terrorism and its financing is well-founded.The first anti-terrorism law was issued in 2004, and Law No 4 of 2010 on Combating Money Laundering and the Financing of Terrorism, which has restructured the National Committee to Combat Money Laundering and the Financing of Terrorism, to play an effective role in co-ordination with various entities in the State as well as to communicate and co-operate with regional and international entities concerned in this regard.The workshop is being attended by a number of legal experts from the Ministries of Justice in the State of Qatar and the United States, in the presence of representatives of several governmental bodies including the Ministry of Interior, the General Secretariat of the Council of Ministers, the Supreme Judicial Council, the Public Prosecutor’s Office, Qatar Central Bank, Ministry of Transport and Communications, Ministry of Economy and Commerce, Private Engineering Office, Police College and Qatar University.