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The U.S. Embassy in Maseru hosted a team of law enforcement officers from the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) Criminal Justice Information Services (CJIS) to carry out the first phase of a possible multi-year project to create the Kingdom of Lesotho’s first national criminal fingerprint database.
At the request of the Lesotho Mounted Police Service to help address some of the country’s most critical national security priorities, the CJIS officers scanned and digitized nearly 70,000 fingerprint records, some dating back to the 1960s, to initiate the first phase of the database system. Future activities will include an assessment of the Lesotho Forensic Laboratory, the signing of a Memorandum of Cooperation and additional professional training, all with the aim of setting up a modernized digital database.
The increased collaboration between Lesotho law enforcement agencies and their US counterparts in the creation of the fingerprint database is a significant step forward in significantly advancing Lesotho’s border security priorities by providing the skills and equipment to better identify threats to Lesotho’s national security and help the country solve other violent crimes.
The last weeks FBI The visit kicked off a series of skills-sharing activities focused on best practices in technology and investigation as part of an expanded partnership between the United States and the Kingdom of Lesotho. A visit by the Diplomatic Security Service is scheduled for later this year to support increased collaboration on human trafficking in Lesotho and southern Africa. In early 2022, a team from the Naval Criminal Investigative Service will travel to Lesotho to train the government and law enforcement in investigative techniques.
Distributed by APO Group on behalf of the United States Embassy in Lesotho.
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