CT Public Spaces brings together specialists from the Spanish Guardia Civil, the National Counter Terrorism Center and the Kenyan National Police Service in a drill with security professionals in public spaces.
The activity has served to put into practice everything learned in the previous trainings with Guardia Civil and specialists from the EU High Risk Security Network (EUHRSN), within the framework of the EU-funded project CT Public Spaces.
Since January 2023, members of the Rapid Action Group (GAR) of Guardia Civil have been collaborating with the Kenyan security forces in the preparation of two exercises, one theoretical (Table Top) and another practical (LIVEX), consisting on a drill including all Security Forces that must be involved in the immediate reaction to a terrorist attack in a public space.
These type of drills, that the project also carried out in Senegal (Jan 2023) and will soon put in place in Ghana, are structured in two phases; one of cabinet called Table Top, and another with the intervention of police units and role players that recreate situations of risk, which is called LIVEX. Both phases aim at using the equipment donated by the project, as well as putting into practice the tactics, techniques and procedures trained through the professional exchanges that have been carried out since 2021 around issues dealing with Command and Control, Risk Analysis, Prevention, Protection and Reaction to terrorist attacks in public spaces, amongst others.
The Shopping Center "Village Market" has served as a location for the exercise, carried out in the afternoon of the 11th and mainly from 23h, once it was closed to the public. It consisted of a series of incidents and a terrorist attack with hostages, in whose immediate response members of the National Counter Terrorism Center and the Kenyan National Police Service were involved.
Among the authorities participating in the activity were different representatives ofthe Ministry of the Interior as well as the director of the NCTC of Kenya, the Ambassadors of Spain and Slovakia, the Head of Delegation (HoD) of the European Union in Kenya, the head of the Foreign Policy unit of the European Commission and staff of the European External Action Service, together with members from other European diplomatic representations.
This exercise is part of a set of activities that, within the CT Public Spaces Project, are carried out with the Counterterrorism Centers and the Security Forces of Ghana, Kenya and Senegal, in order to strengthen capacities for the prevention and mitigation, where appropriate, of possible terrorist attacks in public spaces.
