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INTERPOL said on Wednesday that a three-week border security operation across five countries in the Middle East and North Africa produced 48 arrests, including eight people wanted internationally under Red Notices and one under a Wanted Persons Diffusion.
Operation Phoenix ran at air, land and sea borders in Algeria, Jordan, Morocco, Palestine and Tunisia. Officers ran more than 700,000 checks against INTERPOL databases, which returned 246 hits on individuals and travel documents. Five travel documents listed in the organization's Stolen and Lost Travel Documents database were seized. Operational coordination units were set up in Algiers and Amman.
Among the arrests was the suspected mastermind of a 2022 shooting in Toulouse, France, detained at Houari Bou Madian International Airport in Algiers. He had escaped from prison after being sentenced to eight years for drug trafficking, taking part in a criminal conspiracy, and possessing weapons. A second prison escapee wanted by French authorities, convicted of murder and sentenced to 15 years, was stopped at a land crossing on the border between Algeria and Tunisia.
Seizures included 11 luxury vehicles, $16,300 and 9,900 euros in cash, 1.8 kilograms of gold, 13,000 Captagon pills, 123 crystal meth capsules, 530 mobile phones and 1,525 cartons of smuggled cigarettes.
The operation formed part of Project Momentum-MENA, a three-year INTERPOL program funded by the European Union that trains and deploys women police officers in the region. It was the first cross-regional operation in the Middle East and North Africa in which female officers held full operational responsibility, covering first-line document checks, second-line interviews at border points, border leadership, and coordination with INTERPOL offices in the five countries. María Carmen Muñoz González, INTERPOL's director of counter-terrorism, said the results showed "the effectiveness of international police cooperation at potentially sensitive border crossings".
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