INTERPOL ARREST ALERT DRAWS FLAK
Groups accuse world police agency of allowing regimes to use it to capture dissidents
THE red notice, the bestknown weapon in the arsenal of Interpol in snaring criminals, still risks being misused by authoritarian regimes despite an overhaul of the controversial system.
The red notices are issued by the international police organisation to authorities worldwide asking for the arrest of individuals pending their extradition to the member state.
But rights groups have repeatedly complained that the system has been abused by governments to nab dissidents, as well as dangerous criminals.
Russia, China and also Turkey, which stepped up a crackdown on wanted fugitives in the wake of the 2016 failed coup bid against President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, are regarded as the most egregious abusers of the red notice.
But they are now being joined by a growing number of autocratically-ruled Latin American and Middle Eastern states.
“There isn’t detailed public information around which states issue the most politically-motivated or abusive Red Notices,” complained Alex Mik, campaigns and networks director of non-governmental organisation Fair Trials.
“As well as Russia, China and Turkey, we’ve seen examples from Egypt, Azerbaijan, United Arab Emirates, Venezuela, Iran, Indonesia, Bahrain and more.”
After persecution and torture in Egypt, Sayed Abdellatif fled his home country and sought asylum in Australia in 2012.
But he was detained on the basis of an Interpol red notice issued by Interpol at Cairo’s request and spent five years in a refugee detention centre before the warrant was lifted.
Footballer Hakeem al-Araibi, who was granted refugee status and residency in Australia in 2017 after fleeing his native Bahrain, was arrested while on honeymoon in Thailand in November on an Interpol notice.
Turkish-German writer Dogan Akhanli was unable to leave Spain for months in 2017 after being arrested on the basis of a red notice issued by Turkey.
From late 2014, Interpol Secretary-General Juergen Stock launched a reform imposing new controls aimed at better ensuring the system was not abused by member states.
It also reviewed the working of its Commission for the Control of Interpol’s Files (CCF), which allows the examination and contestation of red notices.
Financier Bill Browder, once a key investor in Russia who has hounded the Kremlin since the death in a Moscow prison of his lawyer Sergei Magnitsky in 2009, has been the target of repeated notices and even called a bestselling book about his experience Red Notice.
Stock defended the system, saying that “the review of notices and diffusions is done based on the information available at the time the request is made”.
Alain Bauer, professor of criminology at France’s National Conservatory of Arts and Crafts, said greater and faster oversight was needed. But he argued that completely ending the controversies is a near impossible task.
“Otherwise you will end up destroying what the whole machine was set up for in the first place.
“Interpol is an institution for transmitting information. And there are also true criminals in dictatorships.”
Stock insisted that Interpol is not “blind to the realities of shifting geopolitical situations. It was created because of them”.
“It is precisely our efforts in supporting international police cooperation, especially where diplomatic relations do not exist, or when armed conflicts rage, which makes Interpol a vital part of global security.”