Condemning acts of terrorism and their impact on innocent civilians and on peace and stability, the United Nations Security Council emphasized the need for establishing willful violation of prohibition on financing of terrorist organizations or individual terrorists as serious criminal offenses in national laws and regulations.
In a resolution adopted unanimously on December 12, the 15-member Council further called on UN Member States to share, where appropriate, information about foreign terrorist fighters, individual terrorists and terrorist organizations, bilateral, regional and global law enforcement agencies, in compliance with international and domestic national law and policy, UN News Centre reported.
The adoption of this resolution comes against the backdrop of at-least three major terrorist attacks around the globe this weekend. Turkey`s capital, Istanbul; Egypt`s capital, Cairo; and Somalia`s capital, Mogadishu, each were targets of terrorist bombings and attacks that killed many civilians and injured many more.
Further in the resolution, the Council also called upon countries to consider the possibility of allowing, through appropriate laws and mechanisms, the transfer of criminal proceedings, as appropriate, in terrorist-related cases as well as enhancing cooperation to prevent terrorists from benefiting from transnational organized crime as well as to investigate and to build the capacity to prosecute such terrorists and transnational organized criminals working with them.
The adoption of the resolution was followed by a high-level meeting of the Security Council on the theme of `international judicial cooperation in countering terrorism.`
Presided over by the Minister of Justice of Spain, Rafael Catala Polo, the meeting was participated in by senior officials and representatives of countries including, inter alia, Angola, China, Egypt, France, Japan, Russia, the United States and the United Kingdom.
The meeting also heard briefings from Jean-Paul Laborde, the Executive Director of the Counter-Terrorism Executive Directorate of the UN; Dorcas Oduor, the Deputy Director of Public Prosecutions in Kenya; and Robert Strang, the Executive Secretary of the International Institute for Justice and the Rule of Law.
