An international counter-terrorism operation involving Nigeria has identified 126 suspected foreign terrorist fighters after authorities used artificial intelligence to analyse more than 108,000 facial images extracted from jihadist material online.
The operation, codenamed Operation Shams II, was coordinated by the International Criminal Police Organisation, INTERPOL, and held in Tunis, Tunisia, from June 1 to 5, 2026.
According to INTERPOL in a statement published on Friday, 28 specialised officers and experts from 11 countries participated in the operation.
The countries were Nigeria, Côte d’Ivoire, Ghana, Iraq, Kenya, Malaysia, the Philippines, Qatar, Tajikistan, Tunisia and Uzbekistan.
INTERPOL said the operation targeted terrorist networks and their financing, particularly activities conducted through digital platforms.
During the five-day exercise, investigators extracted 108,076 facial images from visual material published by jihadist groups.
AI-assisted tools and scripts were then used to automate parts of the investigative process, including identifying duplicate photographs and assessing image quality.
The exercise reduced the original dataset to 6,362 unique, high-quality facial images, which were subsequently searched through INTERPOL’s facial recognition system.
INTERPOL stressed that the AI-generated results were not treated as final matches. Trained officers and analysts reviewed and verified the results in accordance with the organisation’s rules for processing data.
Additional intelligence from INTERPOL’s National Central Bureau in Baghdad, Iraq, also provided hundreds of images linked to terrorism suspects.
“To date, 126 Foreign Terrorist Fighters have been identified from the images processed during Operation Shams II,” INTERPOL said.
The organisation said the matches would strengthen existing intelligence on the suspects, including information that could help establish their potential locations and networks.
The resulting information is being incorporated into INTERPOL databases to assist member countries in detecting, tracking and disrupting the cross-border movement of suspected terrorists.
INTERPOL said investigative leads generated during the operation were already supporting judicial proceedings in participating countries, including a case involving two suspected foreign terrorist fighters who are currently in detention.
It added that thousands of additional images were still awaiting processing and could produce further investigative leads.
The operation went beyond facial recognition, with investigators also using cryptocurrency-tracing tools to examine suspected terrorist financing.
INTERPOL said the financial investigation led to three urgent requests to a virtual asset service provider for customer information as authorities sought to disrupt suspected illicit funding flows.
The participating countries also engaged representatives of the online gaming industry over concerns about the use of digital gaming environments in youth radicalisation.
INTERPOL’s Director of Counter-Terrorism, María Carmen Muñoz González, said the operation showed how international police cooperation could be combined with AI-assisted analysis.
“The success of Operation Shams II demonstrates the value of combining international law enforcement cooperation with responsible AI-assisted analytical capabilities,” she said.
She added that the approach could serve as a model for future international law enforcement operations targeting criminal networks.
Operation Shams II was conducted under the CT TECH+ Project, funded by the European Union’s Foreign Policy Instruments and supported by the United Nations Office of Counter-Terrorism.
INTERPOL described the exercise as the first operation of its kind to deploy AI-assisted capabilities on such a scale to analyse terrorist-related visual material and generate investigative leads.
