BERLIN (AFP) — The United States and Germany agreed Tuesday to share more information on terror suspects in a deal that Washington hopes will be a model for cooperation with other countries.
The agreement, initialled in Berlin by US Homeland Security chief Michael Chertoff and US Attorney General Michael Mukasey and their German counterparts, also covers serious crimes other than terrorism, a statement said.
It comes six months after German authorities uncovered a plot to attack US interests and citizens in Germany, including US military installations, after US intelligence passed on information to Berlin.
Three men seized in September -- two German converts to Islam and a Turk -- had attended training camps in Pakistan and were stockpiling chemicals to make car bombs, prosecutors had said.
Data may now be sent "even without being requested, if there are reasonable grounds to believe that the suspects may commit terrorist acts or crimes related to terrorism, or that they have been engaged in training to carry out terrorist acts," a joint US-German statement said on Tuesday.
The agreement, which needs German parliamentary ratification, also creates a basis for the automated exchange of fingerprint and DNA data using a procedure modelled on the Pruem Treaty signed by several European Union states in 2005, they said.
Under the so-called "hit/no-hit procedure" counties can find out within minutes whether a terror suspect's data is on another country's national DNA and fingerprint database.
If there is a "hit" then either Washington or Berlin can make a formal application for further information about this person, although there will no sharing of DNA files as the US does not have the necessary legal framework, German Interior Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble said.
Mukasey told a joint news conference that Washington was in preliminary talks with other countries on similar bilateral agreements and that he would raise the subject during talks with EU officials in Brussels on Wednesday.
"This is a wonderful model... I hope that others will follow," he said.
"We are indeed fighting a networked international enemy and therefore we have to respond with global networks of our own... Today's agreement between the United States and Germany reinforces our collective commitment to combat global terrorism while ensuring robust privacy protection," Chertoff said.
"It is imperative as peace-loving nations we continue to work together to counter the threat of terrorism and to cooperate in this effort using every tool at our disposal."
German Justice Minister Brigitte Zypries rejected concerns that the agreement represented a further attack on civil liberties, saying it included a "good level of data protection."
"The data that is transferred can only be used in areas covered by the agreement and not for example as evidence in ongoing criminal cases," Zypries told the news conference.
"We have ensured that there is an obligation that automated requests for information and replies are recorded... and of course there is an obligation for the data to be destroyed" if it is not used.
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