‘Crucial to stop terror funding’

Security experts of four mega cities of the world — Mumbai, London, Manila and New York — on Tuesday emphasised better networking among stakeholders in their bid to prevent terror attacks.

Security experts, policy makers and thinkers from different nations were in the city to take part in the two-day conference on megacity security organised by the US consulate general that concluded Tuesday. They also raised the crucial issue of funding of terrorist organisations and advocated stopping the terror groups’ funding.

“Terrorism does not and cannot happen without funding as it involves huge money to train operatives, getting sophisticated equipment, weapons and other logistics. Hence, if funding to these terror groups is stopped, then problem would be solved,” Chandra Iyengar, former bureaucrat who headed the home department of Maharashtra during the 26/11 terror attacks in Mumbai, said.

Sharing first hand account of the 26/11 attacks in the country’s financial capital that claimed 166 lives and left over 250 injured, Mr Iyengar said the reason behind the 26/11 attacks was “lack of precise intelligence” and the unexpected manner in which terrorists executed their plan. “During 26/11, our hospitals were not equipped to deal with such massive massacre. We had no volunteers to reach out or find out the relatives of the victims, which we later did through proper network,” the former IAS officer said.

General Jonathan Ferdinand Miano, director, directorate of operations, government of Philippines, said his department (police) has learnt a wide range of lessons from a spate of crimes that took place in Manila city in past few years and have formulated plans to counter extremists’ plot.

“We are dealing with homegrown extremists. We are also dealing hard with those who are close to violent extremists but don’t meet the threshold for criminal proceedings to be taken against them,” he said.