Sec. 2. FINDINGS; SENSE OF CONGRESS

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## SEC. 2 FINDINGS; SENSE OF CONGRESS ###

(a)Findings Congress makes the following findings: ####

(1)The Department of State’s existing rewards programs permit the payment of reward for information leading to the arrest or conviction of— #####

(A)individuals who have committed, or attempted or conspired to commit, certain acts of international terrorism; #####

(B)individuals who have committed, or attempted or conspired to commit, certain narcotics-related offenses; and #####

(C)individuals who have been indicted by certain international criminal tribunals. ####

(2)The Department of State considers the rewards program to be “one of the most valuable assets the U.S. Government has in the fight against international terrorism”. Since the program’s inception in 1984, the United States Government has rewarded over 60 people who provided actionable information that, according to the Department of State, prevented international terrorist attacks or helped convict individuals involved in terrorist attacks. ####

(3)The program has been credited with providing information in several high-profile cases, including the arrest of Ramzi Yousef, who was convicted in the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center, the deaths of Uday and Qusay Hussein, who United States military forces located and killed in Iraq after receiving information about their locations, and the arrests or deaths of several members of the Abu Sayyaf group, believed to be responsible for the kidnappings and deaths of United States citizens and Filipinos in the Philippines. ###

(b)Sense of Congress It is the sense of Congress that the rewards program of the Department of State should be expanded in order to— ####

(1)address the growing threat to important United States interests from transnational criminal activity, such as intellectual property rights piracy, money laundering, trafficking in persons, arms trafficking, and cybercrime; and ####

(2)target other individuals indicted by international, hybrid, or mixed tribunals for genocide, war crimes, or crimes against humanity.