Ministers from the ‘Five Eyes’ partnership all agreed to work together to tackle the increasing global threats caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, in a virtual meeting co-chaired by Home Secretary Priti Patel today (Wednesday 17 June).

At the meeting of Home Affairs, Interior and Security Ministers from Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the UK and the US, they discussed a range of threats including the increased risk of online child sexual abuse, disinformation and hostile state activity.

Home Secretary Priti Patel said:

These are unprecedented times and now more than ever it is important we continue to work with our closest allies to protect our citizens.

I was pleased to speak with my ‘Five Eyes’ colleagues yesterday to discuss the shared threats we are facing and how we will work together to tackle them.

Ministers raised the persistent threat of hostile state activity as well as the spread of disinformation during the pandemic which is putting lives at risk. The nations agreed to share best practice and work together to counter these threats and ensure that the public can access reliable information to protect themselves.

The Home Secretary raised concerns about the increased risk to children online during the pandemic and welcomed the recent announcement by the Tech Coalition on tackling online child abuse. This builds on the Voluntary Principles to Counter Online Child Sexual Exploitation and Abuse, the landmark blueprint to keeping children safe online.

But the Five Country partners were clear that technology companies need to work quickly and go further to address the issues that continue to leave children vulnerable to predators online.

The Home Secretary said the threat of online child abuse and terrorism would increase if companies like Facebook continued with plans for end-to-end encryption across their platforms. Ministers agreed that tech companies should work closely with governments to ensure their plans do not damage efforts to keep the public safe.

Ministers also raised the issue of cyber criminals exploiting the pandemic through ransomware, malware and phishing attacks. Ministers agreed on the need to share intelligence around these kinds of scams and work closely to stop them.

Ministers of the ‘Five Eyes’ nations agreed to continue to keep in regular contact during the pandemic and to meet in person for the next Five Country Ministerial event in New Zealand when possible.

Ministers in attendance were:

• Home Secretary Priti Patel (co-chair)
• New Zealand’s Minister for Justice Andrew Little (co-chair)
• Australian Minister for Home Affairs Peter Dutton
• Canadian Minister for Public Safety Bill Blair
• US Attorney General William Barr
• US Acting Deputy Secretary of Homeland Security Ken Cuccinelli

The conviction came about after a ground-breaking piece of collaboration between the UK and Pakistan, which allowed evidence gathered by the Metropolitan Police to be shared with Pakistani prosecutors and be presented as part of their case.

It ends an investigation into the death of Dr Farooq, a senior figure within the Pakistani political party Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM). He was was murdered on 16th September 2010 when, after returning home from work, he was approached and brutally and fatally attacked by two men armed with a brick and knives.

After a trial in Islamabad, Pakistani national Mohsin Ali Syed, 35 (15.05.1985), was found guilty of murder and conspiracy to murder Dr Imran.

Muhammad Kashif Khan Kamran, 40 (6.7.1979), a Pakistani national and the other individual who was identified by Met detectives as being involved in the murder, was convicted in absentia of murdering Dr Farooq.

Enquiries into the pair’s background later revealed that both Syed and Kamran were connected to the MQM party, and confirmed the investigation team’s suspicion that the murder had likely been related to politics.

Dr Christian Turner CMG, British High Commissioner to Pakistan, said:

Today’s conviction marks a team effort between law agencies in the UK and Pakistan working together to get justice for the murder of Dr Imran Farooq.

This ground-breaking legal collaboration, assisted by the British High Commission, meant that evidence gathered by the British police could be shared with Pakistani prosecutors and used in the successful prosecution of Mohsin Ali Syed.

• A formal mutual legal assistance (MLA) request by Pakistan to the UK was made in February 2019. This was followed by a temporary change to Pakistani law which provided that the death penalty would not be used in cases where evidence had been transferred under MLA from a state where the death penalty is prohibited. This was further supported by assurances from the Pakistani authorities that the death penalty would not be imposed in this case.

• In August 2019, the MLA request was accepted by UK authorities and officers began the process of providing relevant evidence from their investigation to the Pakistani authorities to assist in their prosecution of Syed and Kamran. The temporary change to Pakistani law and the consequent provision of UK evidence in a Pakistani trial were ground-breaking steps forward in legal cooperation between the UK and Pakistan.

• The investigation into the murder of Dr Farooq, who was killed in Edgware, North London, is the culmination of painstaking work by detectives from the Met Police’s Counter Terrorism Command, who sifted through thousands of hours of CCTV, spoke with over 4,000 witnesses and collected more than 4,500 exhibits as part of the investigation.

• Initially, there was very little evidence for detectives to use that would help identify the attackers. A small number of witnesses had seen the attack, and provided descriptions of the two men, but there was no CCTV near the house or close by that showed the suspects and no immediate forensic evidence available to help identify the attackers.

• Later investigations managed to trace the attackers via CCTV at an ATM, and then to an address in North London which linked both attackers. Further CCTV footage was then uncovered.

• Detectives discovered days after the murder Syed and Kamran had travelled on a flight from London to Colombo, Sri Lanka, and then onto Karachi on 19th September.

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Contact: British High Commission, Islamabad; tel. 0300 500 5306