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Events

 

Training Seminar on Advanced Interrogation Skills in Counter-Terrorism

18-21 October 2011| Kampala, Uganda

The Center and the Inter-Governmental Authority on Development’s Security Sector Programme (ISSP) (previously ICPAT), co-hosted a 4-day interactive training seminar on human-rights compliant interrogation techniques. The seminar was held in Kampala, and included officials from Djibouti, Ethiopia, Kenya, Somalia, Sudan and Uganda, as well as South Sudan. Participants were drawn from the National Security Services, Police, National Counter Terrorism Centers and the Joint Anti-Terrorism Task Force.

This seminar was the fourth in a series of meetings designed to strengthen a regional counterterrorism law enforcement network in the IGAD region. Sessions were led by experts and practitioners from the field as well as the UN. Training topics included the negative operational and strategic consequences of coercive interrogation methods, international human rights law and norms as they apply to interrogations, rapport building with interviewees, the advantages of non-coercive interrogation techniques, supervising and managing interrogators, as well as special considerations regarding interrogations of vulnerable groups such as women, youth and children.
Training participants engaged in role-playing and simulation exercises designed to allow them to practice techniques for effective non-coercive interviewing of suspects, witnesses and victims. Participants concluded the meeting with a brainstorming session on the development of concrete steps for encouraging non-coercive interrogations in East Africa.

Feedback from the session has been uniformly positive. One week after the session, one participant wrote saying: “We are already employing the skills acquired and the results are amazing.”

Click here to read more about the project.