Delinquents and Smugglers (Sunday Times, Sept. 18, 1955)
From IAN FLEMING, Special Representative of The Sunday Times at the International Police Conference
ISTANBUL, Saturday.
Despite the respective resignation and dismissal of its joint hosts, the Turkish Minister of the Interior and the Istanbul Chief of Police, the Twenty-fourth General Assembly of the International Police Commission tactfully averted its gaze from the surrounding shame and chaos, completed its labours and on Wednesday, discreetly thankful, took to its heels. Thanks to the heroic efforts of the secretariat much was achieved and many criminal loopholes have been blocked. But the most solid achievement was not in the final minutes of the assembly but in the public and private airing of the problems and cases of the police chiefs from 52 different countries.
Here, without committing Governments, and without the befogging intrusions of national sentiment, embarrassing topics could be discussed on the technical level. Thus the head of the Australian delegation could talk over piracy from the Pacific pearling grounds with the Police Chief of Tokyo, the head of the Egyptian Sureté could raise with the Inspector-General of Police of Tel Aviv the increased drug traffic from the Arab countries, and Mr. Donald Fish, B.O.A.C. chief security officer, could offer private advice to the director of the new Delhi intelligence bureau on certain ingenious ruses used for concealing gold bars in aircraft.
Juvenilia
Unofficial pooling of experience and knowledge is far more important and practical than the adoption of joint resolutions by representatives of 52 different countries with widely varying customs and legal systems. For example, juvenile delinquency sounds an easy topic to discuss. Everyone agrees that there should be less of it. But no resolution will cover even the words “juvenile” and “delinquency” as applied to, say, India, Scotland and Norway, let alone the other 49 States.
What about the criminal status of juvenile homosexuality, for instance? When you come to statistics, how do you explain that as against an international norm of 17 per cent., the percentage of crime committed by juveniles is 0.5 per cent. in Denmark and 44.5 per cent. in Scotland? In fact, the age of puberty—much later in Denmark—comes in as well as the differences in criminal law and the relative stringency of Scottish courts, and perhaps the Irish element in Glasgow. That is an example of the difficulty of codifying crime and therefore of codifying methods of prevention.
Illicit Gold
On the other hand, on a matter like gold-smuggling Interpol can be of real value, and it is probable that India, which is the chief target for the traffic, as America is for narcotic smugglers, will get real co-operation as a result of the remarkable facts her delegation laid before the assembly. It seems that she is being deluged with illicit gold. During 1954 nearly 40,000 ounces, valued at about £6 million, were seized by customs and police in 229 cases, involving 236 foreign nationals, and the delegation admitted that this haul can represent only a fraction of the illegal imports. Apparently it is coming in from all the gold-producing countries of the world— from Australia by steamship via Macao, Hongkong and Singapore; from Africa by fast lugger via Egypt, Syria and the Persian Gulf; from America by air via London, France, Switzerland and the Middle East. All this represents one of the most fabulous criminal networks in history, and the many Interpol States involved will now co-operate to crush it.
Other smaller points of interest that came up in discussion include the following. The U.S. Customs are particularly troubled by diamond-smuggling from Belgium and by the smuggling of watches and watch-movements from Switzerland. Regarding the latter. Dr. Grassberger, from Vienna, where next year’s Interpol conference will take place, observed that it is better to get real smuggled Swiss watches than counterfeit ones. For the past two years an Austrian gang have been running a side-line to the smuggling of watch-movements: they put cheap watch-movements in formerly discarded watch-cases, forge famous names on the dials and smuggle these too.
The United Nations delegate reported an interesting technical process for discovering the geographical origin of smuggled narcotics. The U.N. Narcotics Division has discovered that by alkaloid and spectrographic analysis the nature of the soil in which captured opium was grown, and thus its country of origin, can be determined, greatly facilitating the pursuit back down the pipe-line.
Policing Air Routes
Sir Ronald Howe, deputy commissioner at Scotland Yard, presented the common-sense view of the Metropolitan Police and the Home Office on many recommendations where a conservative voice was needed. For instance on the occasion when the delegate from Chile suggested that your finger-prints should be verified before you could cash a cheque! As chairman of the sub-committee on policing the air routes, he fought for the rights and comforts of the passenger, and as a result we may see a simplification of the dreadful embarkation and disembarkation cards and a check to the practice in some countries of depriving the transit passenger of his passport during overnight stops.
(Incidentally I found unanimity among the senior delegates that Sir Ronald should be invited to become President of Interpol when M. Louwage of Belgium in due course resigns. This will be a great tribute to the prestige abroad of Scotland Yard.)
The corridors of the ornate Chalet Palace where the meetings were held were a splendid listening post. Here the Chief of Police of Thailand told me of the two elephants which form his riot squad. “Very effective against small villages,” he explained. Mr. Charles Siragusa, head of the U.S. Bureau of Narcotics, explained his methods for “leaning on” Lucky Luciano, the famous American gangster who was deported from America and now lives in Naples. “He won’t explain how he happens to stay so rich,” said Mr. Siragusa; “so my Italian police friends have interpreted this as withholding information from them and have put him on parole. That means that he may not consort with criminals and has to be indoors by 11 o’clock every night. One day soon he will happen to talk to a waiter with a police record or get home a few minutes late and will find himself in gaol. That is what we call ‘leaning on’ someone.”
The Director of the Paris Sureté talked of the iron-clad conspiracy of silence among the Dominici family. The Australian delegate complained of the expense of the Petrov case, which has not only left Australia with the burden of keeping Petrov alive but has meant the abstention of Russia from Australian wool sales for over a year. The famous Professor Soedermann, from Sweden, told me of a hitherto unpublicised plot to kill Hitler in 1942, and so on.
Ignorance is Bliss
The one police chief who has been sadly missed this year is the delegate from Burma. Last year at Rome the assembly was discussing sex crimes, and one by one delegates from the major Western powers reeled off their formidable and grisly statistics. Finally the Burmese delegate diffidently climbed to the rostrum. “I must apologise to the assembly,” he said, “for I have no statistics on this subject. We are a backward nation and have no sex-crimes. But as our civilisation catches up with those of the distinguished delegates who have been speaking I hope we may do better. Next year I will try to bring some good statistics on this matter.” Perhaps this year he was ashamed to come back still empty-handed.