A truly international team met between the 3rd and the 13th of January in Maldives for a Forensics diving course which was organised by CRIMARIO II, in collaboration with the French National Gendarmerie (CNING Centre National d’Instruction Nautique de la Gendarmerie) and hosted by the Maldivian Cost Guard diving school.
French instructors, with the help of Filipino and Djiboutian interpreters, initiated coast guards from Maldives and Sri Lanka to different methods and techniques of underwater investigations from searching of traces and clues in an underwater crime scene to classify objects and taking underwater images. A summary exercise, including a body discovery scenario, closed the training.
The objective was to provide trainees with the first notions of investigation in an underwater environment. Techniques that they will then be able to use and adapt to their model and their needs, which vary according to each territory. In the Maldives, a country impacted by boat accidents, the CNING gendarmes have thus reinforced the “recording of elements on the victim” aspect. For Sri Lanka participants, who are more affected by problems linked to drug trafficking, the part related to “fingerprints on container” has been addressed more in depth.
Furthermore, magistrates from Sri Lanka learned how to give guidance to the divers to collect evidence, and best use it in trials courts; they were introduced to possibilities and limitations of underwater investigations.