Counter-terrorism operation leverages artificial intelligence to identify 126 terrorism suspects

LYON, France – A first-of-its-kind operation to disrupt terrorist networks in the digital domain has harnessed artificial intelligence to identify suspected terrorists.

Operation Shams II (1 – 5 June 2026), coordinated by INTERPOL, brought together 28 specialized officers and experts from 11 countries. During the five days of coordinated action, held in Tunis, Tunisia, law enforcement officers extracted 108,076 facial images from visual content published by jihadist groups. 

Programmed AI agents and advanced AI-generated scripts were used to automate parts of the data collection and investigative processes, enabling the system to deduplicate and quality-check the images. This narrowed the dataset to 6,362 unique, high-quality facial images ready for processing through INTERPOL’s Facial Recognition System. AI-generated output was subject to review and verification by trained officers and analysts in accordance with INTERPOL's Rules on the Processing of Data.

In addition to the images obtained from online platforms, officers from INTERPOL’s National Central Bureau in Baghdad, Iraq, provided a large intelligence dataset related to terrorism suspects, adding hundreds more images for extraction and processing.