Border security

Extra Vigilance At Borders Worldwide Following Arrest Of Paris Attacks Suspect

Following the arrest of Paris attacks suspect Salah Abdeslam in Belgium on Friday, INTERPOL has advised extra vigilance at border controls to its 190 member countries.

The world police body is warning that the capture of the 26-year-old Belgian-born French national, a key suspect in the November 2015 Paris attacks, may encourage any accomplices to attempt to flee Europe, or elsewhere.

An advisory sent to all member countries by the INTERPOL General Secretariat headquarters in Lyon, recommends enhanced checks at control points, particularly against INTERPOL’s Stolen and Lost Travel Documents (SLTD) database which contains some 56 million documents from 172 countries.

The SLTD database also currently holds details of some 250,000 stolen and lost Syrian and Iraqi passports, of which more than 190,000 were reported stolen as blank.