Ladies and Gentlemen

First of all I would like to thank you, Mr Torgny Pettersson for the invitation. It is indeed an honour for me to stand here in front of such a distinguished audience. I think that we all in this room have the same target namely to fight back the legalisation movement in Europe. Therefore the work of the ECAD is so important and should rend the highest back up from politicians and law enforcement agencies within the European countries. Too many people expose their ignorance by supporting a legalisation of various drugs. Unfortunately several so-called "public personalities" can be counted into the selected group of the eager supporters of drug legalisation. So please continue your very important, appreciated and respected work against the drug legalisation movement. I'm one of your supporters and do not forget that you have a majority of the Europe population behind you.

Before I start my presentation, please let me shortly introduce myself. I am a Swedish police officer who returned to Sweden in January this year after a 7,5 years service at the Interpol Headquarters in Lyon, France. I have been fighting drug traffickers since 15 years. I started as a police officer in 1979. In 1987 I joined a drug squad in Stockholm from where I built up the basic platform for my future drug engagements. Since then I have almost exclusively worked with drug related topics. In 1995 I entered the international scene when I was assigned to the drug division at the Interpol Headquarters. During my time at Interpol I have co-ordinated innumerable operational drug cases all over the world focusing on various ethnic groups like Nigerian, Colombian, Albanian, and Turkish organisations to mention a few examples. My area of responsibility was, apart from the Nordic countries, Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, the Baltic States, and the Central East European countries. I worked three years at the Balkan Peninsula assisting countries to set up drug intelligence units with an analytical capacity.

Upon my return to the Swedish Police I was asked whether I would like to run a project named "CASE" that stands for "Comprehensive Actions against Synthetic drugs in Europe". It is a drug project started last year under the supervision of the Council of the European Union. I mention it for you since the creation of this project showes that the Council of the European Union is supporting efforts against drug trafficking activities within the Union. I will come back to this issue at the end of my presentation.

During my last two years at the Interpol HQ, I focused my interest on the white heroin outflow from Afghanistan via the Central Asian countries over the Russian land road and into Europe. This trafficking route is known as the "Northern Route" which is also the reason for my presence here today. Torgny asked me to share with you my experiences from Central Asia and asked me to speak about the possible future threats from this "Northern Route". Instead of painting a black future I will try to convince you that there is in fact measures which we can take if we work together the law enforcement agencies, United Nations and Non Governmental Organisations. I will tell you about my preparations in order to create a ground for a joint co-operation among the affected source- transit- and destination countries. I've decided not to tire you with statistics or graphics and instead make my presentation, shall we say a little bit "operational". I will introduce a concept of a joint international co-operation known as the "Project Nhero". "Nhero" stands for the "Northern Heroin Route" and was born after a joint Finnish and Swedish initiative. The project will illustrate what kind of measures can be taken in order to try to fight back a new trafficking trend. But before I get you familiar with project "Nhero" I deem it appropriate to give you an update of the drug situation in Central Asia focusing on Afghanistan and Tajikistan.

Major changes took place after the events of the 11th September. After the collapse of the twin towers in New York, it became even more obvious that drug related activities in Afghanistan fuel terrorist organisations who are active at a global level. This is a reason good enough to prioritise drug control in Central Asia.

The presence of the US military forces in Afghanistan drastically changed the conditions for the local drug barons. A large number of clandestine heroin laboratories in the south-east part of the country were dismantled and destroyed by the allied forces. As a consequence the drug barons moved their laboratories up to the Northwest part of Afghanistan and placed them mainly along the 1400 kilometre border towards Tajikistan. Huge stockpiles of factory produced heroin were to be found on both side along this border. But were there any opportunities to create contacts across the border? Yes it was. It is estimated that approximately 70.000 Tajikistani left the country during the civil war in 1991-1992 and moved into Afghanistan where some of them came into contact with Afghani drug dealers. So, the network of contacts across the border was already existing.

The "Northern Route" has several advantages compared to the traditional "Balkan Route". For those who are not familiar with the "Balkan Route", this is the name of the "southern route" of heroin, morphine and opium leaving Afghanistan. By taking drugs from Afghanistan via Pakistan crossing the heavy militarised border to Iran and then further into Turkey and to the stockpiles within the Balkan countries like Bulgaria, Romania, Macedonia, Czech Republic before reaching West Europe, demands a lot of efforts and high risk taking from the traffickers. Since the Afghani drug barons were more or less forced to move their activities from the south up to the north, they seemed to have discovered that it is easier to take the heroin out via the "Northern Route" rather than the traditional "Balkan Route". The borders are more porous in Central Asia and in Russia. The linguistic advantage is another important aspect that facilitates the criminal activities. Have you thought about that all the way along the "Northern Route", one and the same language can be used from the border of Afghanistan to the border of Norway!

The last year's opium cultivation was probably one of the highest ever, record harvests. After the production downturn in 2001, following the Taliban ban on opium cultivation, production was up again in 2002. It was estimated (UN) that 3,200 and 3,600 tons of raw opium were harvested. Cultivation continued to rise along the northern Afghan border with the Central Asian states.

The following figures confirm the reports of an increase of the opium cultivation. Tajikistan seized in 2002 almost 4 tons of heroin, i.e. the same amount as from the previous year. As for 1st March 2003, more than 1,1 tons of heroin has been seized in Tajikistan to be compared with the previous year at the same time period when "only" 415 kilos of heroin was seized. A dramatic increases indeed. So where will it end at the end of this year? Nobody knows the trouble we've seen. This alarming reports and figures proves the necessity to focus and put priorities on this huge problem and take joint international efforts against it. Please keep in mind that only five years ago, in 1998 Tajikistan seized 271 kilos of heroin, to be followed by 700 kilos in 1999. Then in 2000 as much as 1900 kilos were seized and the amount doubled the following year when 4239 kilos was intercepted. What happened in Tajikistan? One explanation is that the United Nation drug control program has invested both money and staff in order to assist Tajikistan in drug fighting measures. A number of UN projects have been run in Central Asia since 1998 and up to date. I would like to especially mention and credit the UN Regional Office in Central Asia at Tashkent in Uzbekistan for their extraordinary and professional inputs in order to build up and equip various agencies in the combat against the regional traffickers. Once again, working alone was not sufficient. An international joint effort between various law enforcement agencies and United Nation in order to find an agreement of future tactics and measures against the drug traffickers was in need.

So the time has come to introduce for you project "NHERO". It is a joint collaboration between Tajikistan and countries from the East and West Europe. The project was kicked off in Riga, Latvia in December 2000.

It all began in June 2000 when Finland rang in the alarm-bell. The presence of white heroin of an extremely high purity in combination with an increase of overdoses among the abusers came to the Finnish police attention. To give you an example; Finland reported about a case of a street seizure where the purity of the heroin was as high as 93%. The "normal" purity of heroin at a street level is between 10-18%. So everybody in this room can easily understand what happen when a drug abuser inject heroin with an almost pharmaceutical purity into his veins. He faces an immediate dead.

Based on the information provided by Finland, I checked the situation in the neighbouring countries at the Baltic Sea region. The Baltic States and in particular Latvia and Lithuania reported about the same phenomenon and development as in Finland.

We could also see that the street price of white heroin was extremely low. In Latvia it was possible to obtain a gram of high purity heroin for approximately 30-40 US Dollars. A normal street price in Sweden is approximately 100-130 US Dollars while in Finland the price is around 135-200 Dollars. Reports from Germany showed the same trend i.e. white heroin of a very high purity and a sudden increase of overdoses. It seemed to be a kind of an "introduction phase" for white heroin coming from the Northern Route. The dealers also offered the heroin at various schoolyards in Latvia. This became not only a problem exclusively for the police but also for the entire society in the region.

I decided to initiate a joint effort together with the affected countries in order to make a common approach towards this serious threat. The conclusion from the first working meeting in Riga showed however that it was necessary to involve not only the destination countries but also the transit and the source countries. Therefore a second working meeting was held at Moscow in April last year. This meeting was attended by five different Russian law enforcement agencies, representatives for the Drug Control Agency under the Tajikistan Ministry of Interior and from the UNODCP Regional Office in Central Asia and Moscow. The attendees at the meeting now covered the source- transit and destination areas. We agreed upon a concept of how to collaborate within the framework of Project NHERO. We came to the conclusion that;

• it was a necessity to create an immediate international co-operation and co-ordination on this issue
• to set up a system for the sharing and collection of information and intelligence for analytical purposes
• to focus different national interests on common international targets within the source-transit and destination areas

The targets and the aims of the project were to try to;

• disclose criminal structures and organisations
• determine the origin of the drugs
• disclose of modus operandi
• determine the final destinations within Europe
• support national ongoing drug investigations
• take joint operational law enforcement actions

The participating countries were the Baltic States, Tajikistan, Sweden, Finland, Norway, Denmark, Germany, the United Nation drug control offices in Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and in Russia.

In order to have an efficient and realistic approach towards this problem I tried to keep the group of participants as small as possible and to have the same case officers attending the forthcoming meetings. It was also important to mix the delegations in order to avoid a participation of only high ranked law enforcement officers in a chief position. I also deemed it important to have the field investigators present since they do possess the basic knowledge about the heroin situation within their respective region. It was also necessary to underline the importance of concentrating our efforts towards one project only and not be split up in other similar initiatives. I was simply trying to set up some regulations for the confidence and the continuity of the project and create a sense of "teamwork" and loyalty the same as we can find in a football team.

The sharing and exchange of data was extremely important. We agreed upon that the data should be send to my attention at Lyon. I created a special "Nhero-file" in the Interpol database. After the data collection phase it was planned that an analyst should analyse the available information. What should be the added value for the participating countries?

• the possibility of having a structured approach towards a serious problem
• be assisted with a fulltime analysis
• that could complete their own national investigations
• visualisations via link charts from the analyst notebook software
• regularly been provided with reports containing updated information and latest news within the framework of Nhero

Nowadays we can see that the analytical tool is more and more used and accepted as a complement into investigations of a more complex nature. I am a trained analyst myself and very well aware of the advantages of having an analytical assistance to such cases. For those of you who are not familiar with crime analysis, please let me very briefly give you a short background.

There are two different types of analysis, the operational and the strategic one. In project Nhero we used the operational analysis. The definition of operational analysis is "When relating together a wide range of data connected to a specific offence or with crime in general". There are three different types of operational analysis;

1. Case analysis
2. Offender group analysis
3. Comparative case analysis

I choose the latter. Comparative case analysis fitted into the frame of project Nhero. We already decided to share intelligence in order to try to discover whether various cases of drug trafficking activities could be related to each other. The project planning for Nhero was already established. When I say project planning we are talking about the so-called "Intelligence Circle", a favourite expression among analysts worldwide. So, what did we achieve so far? We had;

• identified our aims
• identified the sources where information could be obtained
• identified our project partners, i.e. the participating countries
• started the process of the collection of data and the structured input into a database
• initiated the work of an analyst
• agreed upon the dissemination of the results in the form of an analytical report
• agreed upon the presentation and explanation of conclusions and hypothesis made by the analyst
• ACTION; that our common efforts finally should generate a joint operational action for the benefit of the participating countries

This example of an international co-operation has been given to you only in order to illustrate that it is not complicated to execute such a task. The difficulty is to "plant the idea" among the participants and explains that they hopefully will have some kind of a professional benefit or feedback out from their participation.

What type of information was required for the project? Look at the screen behind me. In fact it is not more complicated than this. What I basically needed was:

• statements from involved persons from the various investigations
• a description of the concealing methods
• telephone numbers, addresses, information of companies, email addresses etc
• additional information like passport and identity documents, bank accounts and road descriptions.

As you can see, a very basic information, easy to obtain and easy to share.

Where did I store this information? While working at Interpol in Lyon I had access to a huge database containing almost five hundred thousands different files of which almost 200.000 were so called nominal files. The information stays in the database for five years and is then deleted unless additional information has been added during this time period. Therefore the information is timely accurate and a valuable source to be used when cross checking information.

As you can see, the concept of the project is very clear and easy to design if only the political will is behind in combination with a professional engagement and knowledge from the participants. I would like to take this opportunity to mention and credit Russia, as a good example of the political will and its hundred percent back up for the project.

Today we can see that the white heroin situation in the Baltic Sea Region has changed. The purity of the heroin at street level has drastically decreased while the prices increased. Ukraine and Belarus are now targets since the heroin export is destined to these countries for further transports into Europe.

What has happened with project Nhero? It is still ongoing. In fact this very day a working meeting is held at Interpol Lyon where the project is evaluated and hopefully decisions for future initiatives are to be taken.

Next week I will leave for Central Asia. I have been asked to execute an evaluation of some drug projects that have been run since a couple of year's back. During the next following weeks I will travel in the Central Asian region. I hope it will generate a genuine knowledge about the current situation in the area that I can share with my collaboration partners also within the ECAD.

Now a few words about another project named CASE as I initially mentioned about.

The project was born after a Swedish initiative during their chairmanship in the European Union. It focuses on the amphetamine situation within the Union. All seizures of amphetamine 500 grams and above will be reported to the project. The team players are the police, the customs, the National Forensic Laboratories and Europol. All member states in the European Union participate. The aim of the project is to trace the amphetamine production areas, laboratories and possible networks and organisations behind. Once again we can see the need of creating a concept for a joint international collaboration. Basically the structure is the same as for project Nhero namely the exchange of intelligence, the use of modern technique and equipment (analysis and computer software), to fight a common target that causes threats to societies. The unique with this project is the close collaboration with the forensics. If you are interested and would like to have more details about project CASE, please do not hesitate to contact me after my presentation.

I will conclude my speech by emphasising the importance of international co-operation and joint efforts if we shall have the slightest chance to influence and disturb the powerful interests behind the drug trafficking worldwide. After the "fall of the wall" between the East and the West we have every chance of succeeding, but we need to co-operate.

Thank you.

 
 
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