Interpol is an international police organization at the UN, the headquarters of which are located in Lyon, France. Interpol does not perform law enforcement duties, such as apprehension and investigation of crimes, by itself, but rather coordinates the work of the law enforcement agencies of all Member States (currently Interpol has 192 members). One of the Interpol’s key functions is to ensure international search for wanted persons and modus operandi. From Ukraine alone up to 2,000 people out of 10,000 records are in Interpol’s search database now.
How does this search database work and why is an international search notice sometimes deleted?
Interpol’s governing bodies are the General Assembly and its Executive Committee, as well as the General Secretariat. The latter is the supreme management body that makes key decisions.
An independent body – the Commission for the Control of Interpol’s Files (Commission) – holds a special place in the Interpol framework. Its function is to ensure that the entering, processing and storing of data in Interpol databases is in compliance with Interpol’s rules.
Depending on the objectives of the search, the appropriate notices (“cards”) are assigned to all targets (wanted objects/entities):
- Red Notice – request to locate convicted or accused person pending extradition;
- Yellow Notice – missing persons alert;
- Blue Notice – request to collect information about a person for investigation purposes;
- Orange Notice – warning of possible threat to people’s health and property;
- Green Notice – warning of persons who have committed criminal offences and are likely to repeat these crimes in other countries;
- Purple Notice – request to seek or provide information on modus operandi and concealment methods used by criminals;
- Black Notice – unidentified bodies.
It is important to remember that the process of issuing notices is not automatic. It only required that legitimate reasons for the search exist and there is information that the person is hiding from the investigative bodies of the state. The application passes several stages of verification at the levels of the National Bureau (Initiator Country) and the General Secretariat.
At the same time, there is a procedure of “preliminary appeal” against the decision on publication in search as was used by Alexander Onishchenko. This procedure provides for considering the complaint about illegality of search of person by the Commission before publishing the Red Notice by General Secretariat.
In practice, the most common reasons to reject placement of the “red notice” or its removal are:
- Expiration of apprehension order, amnesty, etc.
- Political motives of persecution (this ground is being actively used by the representatives of previous political regime).
This cause is a strong argument both at the stage of publishing the data about person (as an example – Interpol refused to issue Red Notice for I. Kolomoisky on request of Russian Federation), and at the stage of appeal against the already published search notices (in particular, Interpol’s refusal to put D. Yarosh on an international wanted list).
- Commercial motives of persecution – criminal prosecution of a person aimed at taking possession of their assets.
- Risk of violations of human rights – freedom of speech, right to a fair trial, prohibition of torture, etc.
- Purpose of “notice” placement was reached – location of a person was identified, the person was seized or extradited.
The person who is on Interpol wanted list (their representative) is entitled to apply to the Commission with a request for correction or deletion of information. The number of complaints is constantly increasing: in 2005 there were 115 complaints, while in 2016 – 1047. Half of those complaints are satisfied.
It should be noted that the Commission’s meetings are held rarely. Since 2017, the number of the Commission’s members has been increased from 5 to 7, and the number of meetings has been increased from 4 to 6. This, however, cannot significantly accelerate the consideration of thousands of complaints. Consequently, the procedure for reviewing complaints against Red Notices issuance is lengthy and formalized.
The proactive work of Ukrainian law enforcement agencies with regard to justification of accusations, which are not political, and the provision of the necessary qualitatively substantiated evidence and documents to international criminal police organization should be the key to effective interaction of the investigation and Interpol.
