ASEAN Plus Three offer assistance to monitor transnational crime - Nur Jazlan

ASEAN Plus Three countries have offered, among others, to share their sophisticated technologies, especially in surveillance and intelligence with the 10-member ASEAN in efforts to combat transnational crime in the region.

Malaysia's Deputy Home Minister Datuk Nur Jazlan Mohamed said the matter was expressed by representatives from three countries, namely China, Japan and South Korea during the 7th ASEAN Ministerial Meeting on Transnational Crime (AMMTC) Plus Three Consultation here Wednesday.

"They also offer assistance to train and exchange information through technology for effectiveness in tracing and combating transboundary crimes," he told a press conference after chairing the two-hour meeting.

He said this when responding to a question on the involvement of the three ASEAN dialogue partners on the agenda of battling transnational crime.

Earlier, Nur Jazlan had also chaired the 4th AMMTC + China Consultation and received a courtesy call from Chinese Deputy Minister of Public Security, Chen Zhimin.

Nur Jazlan said among other issues discussed during the closed-door meeting were the importance of enhancing and synchronising the mechanism of laws used by ASEAN members, as well as the Plus Three countries.

In stating this, he pointed out several cases where criminals were detained not in the country where the person originally committed the crimes, but other states of ASEAN, hence the need to ensure better cooperation among the countries involved, in order for justice to prevail.

"We also discussed improved cooperation, (among the members and the Dialogue partners), information-sharing, technology usage and also improved mutual enforcement among the countries involved.

"This is because different countries have different sets of law, especially in the issue of transnational crime," he said.

On another note, Nur Jazlan reminded the public and media that some details of the transnational crime should not be publicised in order to maintain the secrecy of the investigations.

He said, in order to nab those involved in activities like terrorism, lesser media attention on some of the details of the matter was vital as it would help the authorities to have a better hand in capturing the terrorist.

"The danger of media attention on this sort of issues is that the authorities and the police force lost the element of surprise...we want to actually destroy the network of terrorists or people who are involved in transnational crime.

"There is no point in us catching the people from the front-end of the issue... we want to catch the people who are masterminding behind all of this," he said, adding that in some high-profile cases, the less said was better.

Nur Jazlan pointed out that it would be of no use if all information on steps to apprehend those involved in the network were reported on a wide scale.

According to him, another primary issue highlighted and intensively-discussed during the session was the concern on the danger posed by the militant Islamic State (IS) movement in the region and also in the Three Plus countries.