Officers in SWAT training with just five months left for CHOGM

With five months to go for the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM) in Malta, training for Special Weapons and Tactics (SWAT) has only started a few weeks ago.

Under pressure over heightened security demands for the meeting of 53 prime ministers and a monarch, it was only in May that the first SWAT training for Rapid Intervention Unit officers started.

40 RIU officers have already received training in SWAT tactics according to the ministry’s annual report for 2014. Abela also told the House that the first stage of training started on 11 May, reassuring parliament that the complement undergoing SWAT training would be “sufficient for local necessities” and that the officers would remain part of the RIU.

“Their duties will be similar to those of SWAT teams in service around the world. Their duties will include risk operations connected to serious crime, anti-terrorism, tactical support, and protection of dignitaries.”

Malta will host CHOGM in November 2015 after having first secured its bid back in November 2013.

The RIU was established under former police commissioner Peter Paul Zammit in 2013, to replace the Special Assignment Group set up in the late 1980s under then home affairs minister Guido de Marco. The SAG itself was set up to replace the Special Mobile Unit, disbanded in a bid to depoliticise the notorious riot squad.

Specialist law enforcement blog Corpidelite.net claims former SAG members have complained of the lack of a dedicated SWAT unit within the RIU: “The SAG represented Malta in the Atlas Network, an informal association consisting of the police tactical units of the 28 states of the European Union, whose goal is to improve cooperation and sharing of expertise among police officers. The last Atlas exercise carried out by the SAG took place in 2013 in Italy, with the participation of the Italian State Police Nucleo Centrale di Sicurezza, the Carabinieri’s Gruppo d’Intervento Speciale and the Austrian Einsatzkommando Cobra.”

Abela has told the House in his reply to a PQ that the SWAT-trained officers will become a permanent unit within the RIU.

Malta secured its bid in November 2013 after Mauritius pulled out from holding the event in protest over the decision to hold that year’s gathering in Sri Lanka, which is accused of committing widespread human rights violations.

Mauritius was chosen to stage the biennial gathering in 2015, but its Prime Minister, Navin Chandra Ramgoolam announced just ahead of the Colombo gathering that it no longer wanted to play the role of host, citing Sri Lanka’s human rights record. The leaders of India and Canada also stayed away from the summit after allegations of war crimes committed by Sri Lankan government forces at the end of the country’s 37-year ethnic conflict.