"Wanted by INTERPOL" Has Lost Its Meaning

By Ronald K. Noble

The phrase “Wanted by INTERPOL” used to carry serious weight. It suggested that an individual had been subjected to meaningful scrutiny before the world’s largest international police organization placed its authority behind a request to locate or arrest that person. That assumption is no longer safe.

I know this not as an outside critic, but as INTERPOL’s former Secretary General. From 2000 to 2014, I helped lead the reforms that accelerated the organization’s ability to alert the world when terrorists and dangerous fugitives were being sought. After 9/11, speed mattered. Borders could no longer be allowed to buy violent criminals the time to escape justice.

The problem today, as we approach the 25th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, is not that INTERPOL has become faster. The problem is that it can no longer keep up with the volume, making it too vulnerable to error, overreach, and politicization. Every minute INTERPOL spends lending its name to an unsupportable Red Notice is a minute it cannot spend effectively fighting crime—or protecting against the next 9/11.

One case illustrates the harm these errors can cause. A 16-year-old Russian girl named Alina was the subject of an INTERPOL Yellow Notice declaring her missing, while her mother faced a companion Red Notice accusing her of first-degree kidnapping. Yet Alina was never missing. Her mother, Elena, had adopted her as a small child and was her sole legal parent when they returned to Russia. Alina lived openly, went to school, attended dance lessons, and renewed her identity documents. No one had checked the family’s address or contacted INTERPOL’s Moscow office. Still, for 11 years, the notices remained in circulation.

The human cost was severe. Alina lived under the shadow of being falsely classified as a missing child. Her mother was arrested overseas due to a Red Notice. A childhood is not returnable. 

The harm extends beyond individual families.  In one major case, Australian authorities initiated criminal proceedings against a company and its directors for allegedly conspiring to bribe a neighboring country’s former president and members of parliament. Yet the related INTERPOL Red Notices did not simply reflect the allegation of conspiracy. They effectively presented the fact that bribes had actually been paid – and taken.

A warrant alleging conspiracy involving private individuals is one thing. Using INTERPOL’s global authority in a way that publicly reinforces contested allegations against another country’s political leadership is something else entirely. It damages national reputations, interferes with another country’s internal politics, and compromises the neutrality which INTERPOL’s constitution protects and upon which its legitimacy depends.

In May, the Australian judge overseeing that case permanently stayed the prosecution against the corporate co-defendant, citing incurable defects and concluding that a fair trial was impossible. Yet INTERPOL, required by its constitution to stay out of political matters or out of cases where human rights are at risk, refused to block the notices. This case had two major red flags, and INTERPOL missed both of them.

The danger is not confined to the past. Turkey has publicly announced that it is seeking an INTERPOL Red Notice for the arrest of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on charges including genocide, crimes against humanity, and torture. Yet a request by one member country to use INTERPOL against the sitting political leader of another member country presents the kind of political dispute from which INTERPOL is supposed to stand apart.  Turkey has no business using INTERPOL to seek the arrest of Israel’s Prime Minister - and INTERPOL should already have said so publicly.

That is why the phrase “Wanted by INTERPOL” has lost much of the meaning it once held. The same Red Notice system designed to help countries locate terrorists and dangerous fugitives has been exploited by the United States to hunt a Russian mother for taking her adopted Russian daughter back to Russia; by Australia to accuse another member country’s political leadership of accepting bribes in their own country; and is now being invoked by Turkey to seek the arrest of another INTERPOL member country’s sitting Prime Minister.

Two reforms are urgently needed.

First, INTERPOL should sharply narrow the categories of cases eligible for Red Notices.  Its 30,000 annual requests simply cannot receive adequate individualized review.  

Second, member countries should prohibit the use of INTERPOL against another country’s political leaders when the targeted country objects that the matter is predominantly political. INTERPOL’s constitution was written to keep the organization out of political controversies. That protection must be enforced in practice, not simply cited when convenient.

This matters to the United States and to every other member country. When INTERPOL issues a flawed Red Notice, the damage can last for years. Families can be shattered. Citizens, businesses, and political leaders can suffer irreparable harm. At the same time, INTERPOL is distracted from the mission that justified its expansion in the first place: helping the world respond to genuine criminal threats.

A quarter century ago, INTERPOL became faster. It now needs to be more careful.

If the words “Wanted by INTERPOL” are to recover their meaning, INTERPOL’s 196 member countries must act now to restore credibility to the system behind them.

• Ronald K. Noble served as Secretary General of INTERPOL from 2000 to 2014 and held senior roles in the administrations of Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, and Bill Clinton.