The Exercise scenario called the Black Death is a series of operations undertaken by the competent authorities following a fictitious bioterrorist attack by means of a biological agent of the plague.
The two-day Exercise will attract senior officials (including ministers and commanders of the Police) and representatives of the competent authorities of Belarus, the Czech Republic, Finland, Poland, Slovakia, Ukraine, the INTERPOL Secretariat General, and international organisations such as the World Health Organisation (WHO), the European Centre for Infectious Diseases (ECID), the European Commission (EC), the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), the United Nations Office for Disarmament Affairs (UNODA), the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), Europol and the World Customs Organisation (WCO).
Each country is represented by 1 or 2 active participants whereas Poland, as the co-organiser, had the privilege of inviting 15 observers, all representing Poland’s competent services.
INTERPOL has already organised such exercises twice: in 2007 in its Headquarters in Lyon, France, and in 2008 in Kuala Lumpur in cooperation with the law enforcement authorities of Malaysia, with 50 people from 14 countries and 6 international organisations taking part. The two meetings had the same form, i.e. one of a dialogue group discussing the simulated actions taken in the wake of an emergency such as a bioterrorist attack. According to the participants themselves, the Exercise provided an opportunity for assessing the actions, determining the ways of response in the event of a bioterrorist act as well as the scope of responsibility of individual law enforcement services.
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