INTERPOL is an intergovernmental body with 196 member countries that enables police cooperation and information sharing on global crime threats. INTERPOL is best known for its use of Red Notices, which are a request by a member state to locate and arrest a person who is wanted for criminal purposes.

A Red Notice is a request to law enforcement worldwide to locate and provisionally arrest a person pending extradition, surrender, or similar legal action. A Red Notice is not an international arrest warrant and member countries apply their own laws in deciding whether to arrest a person.

Extradition is the formal process for requesting the surrender of requested persons from one territory to another in order to be prosecuted, sentenced or to serve a sentence imposed in absence.

A Red Notice is normally a good indication that you may be subject to an extradition request. However, receiving a Red Notice does not necessarily mean you will be subject to extradition proceedings. Equally, extradition proceedings can still take place without a Red Notice being issued. 

Red Notices can be made public on INTERPOL’s website or issued privately, so you may not always know or be able to find out if you are subject to one.

What happens if there is a Red Notice against you?

A Red Notice carries a risk that you will be arrested, either at home or while travelling. Being arrested unexpectedly due to a Red Notice is likely to have serious implications; not only is it extremely disruptive but arrests are often publicised leading to reputational damage.

If you think you may be subject to a Red Notice, the main ways to find out are:

• to check the ‘wanted persons’ section of Interpol’s website. However, a Red Notice against you may also be available on INTERPOL’s restricted networks which are visible only to national law enforcement authorities;
• to obtain information from the police on an informal basis; or
• to make a request to the Requests Chamber of the Commission for the Control of Interpol’s Files (‘CCF’) asking for access to your file. The CCF is a body that is responsible for ensuring that data processing at INTERPOL complies with its own rules.

It is usually much more effective to instruct a solicitor to try and ascertain whether a Red Notice has been issued.

The misuse and abuse of Red Notices

Some states are known to abuse the use of Red Notices to target individuals whose political interests or views do not align with the state’s regime. It is therefore not unknown for innocent people to be imprisoned and extradited following the issuance of a Red Notice, which can have devastating consequences.

One point of contention is that INTERPOL is under no obligation, nor does it have the authority, to investigate or assess the merits of an underlying criminal allegation against an individual. It simply serves as an instrument for facilitating collaboration between member states in criminal matters.

There are numerous instances of individuals being arrested pursuant to Red Notices which have later been deemed to be politically motivated.

For example, Patricia Poleo – a well-known investigative journalist who was reporting on the political situation in Venezuela at the time – was subject to an INTERPOL Red Notice and detained in Peru in 2010. Poleo successfully sought asylum in the USA. Following her arrest and challenge to the Notice, INTERPOL ultimately accepted that the Red Notice was politically motivated. It would have been relatively easy for INTERPOL to have identified the risk of political motivation from open-source information had it tried.

In 2016, INTERPOL established a task force responsible for scrutinising Red Notices before publication. Although the inner workings of this review process remain undisclosed, its overarching objective is to evaluate Red Notice requests that do not conform to INTERPOL’s Rules. However, INTERPOL does not publicly disclose the specific procedures or criteria employed by the task force when vetting Red Notices requests, raising questions over the accountability process in place.

Interestingly, data reveals that the system is still being abused despite the implementation of the review task force. In 2021,150 Red Notices were found to be non-compliant with the spirit of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, in violation of Article 2 of INTERPOL’s Constitution, and 353 were of a political, military, religious or racial character, which is in violation of Article 3 of INTERPOL’s Constitution.

High profile examples include the following:

• Enes Kanter Freedom, a National Basketball Association (NBA) player, became subject to a Red Notice in 2019 as Turkey issued terrorism charges against him following his criticism of the Turkish political regime. His Turkish passport was revoked and his family still in Turkey were subject to criminal charges for terrorism.
• Murat Acar was working as a Harvard professor and medical doctor when he was arrested pursuant to an INTERPOL Red Notice in Bahrain and extradited to Turkey in relation to charges connected to the attempted political coup. It was later alleged that Acar and others extradited were subjected to numerous human rights violations including torture.
• Bill Browder has notoriously been sought by Russia due to his involvement in passing the ‘Magnitsky Act’, which intended to punish the Russian officials involved in the death of Russian tax lawyer, Sergei Magnitsky, while detained in a prison in Moscow in 2009. After several attempts by Russia to abuse the Red Notice system, INTERPOL eventually rejected the request.

How can you challenge a Red Notice?

According to INTERPOL’s Constitution, its processes should not be exploited for political, religious, or any other inappropriate objectives, nor should they enable violations of fundamental human rights.

If you suspect that there is a Red Notice against you which has been issued in violation of Interpol’s Constitution or its rules, you can challenge it in different ways:

1. Pre-emptive letter - if you have a suspicion that a Red Notice will soon be issued against you, you can write to INTERPOL ahead of the requesting state making contact, setting out the reasons why publication of the Red Notice would violate INTERPOL’s rules.
2. Request to the local authorities – if you are already subject to a Red Notice and it has been published, you can seek to engage with the relevant law enforcement agency for the notice to be removed or amended, in accordance with the country’s own laws and procedures.
3. Request to the Commission for the Control of Files (‘CCF’) – applications for access to data and/or to delete or correct data, including the removal of red notices, are made to the Requests Chamber of the CCF.

Decisions of the CCF are binding on the INTERPOL General Secretariat.

It is important to note that decisions about guilt and innocence are for the courts in the member states to consider, not for INTERPOL itself.

Silver Notices

After several years of discussion, INTERPOL is set to expand the operation of the coloured notices scheme, with the Silver Notice pilot phase now underway. Silver Notices will be specifically targeted at tracing and recovering criminal assets. The aim is that Silver Notices will enable INTERPOL to track criminals funding terrorist activity and criminals using virtual currency for fraudulent schemes.

On 10 January 2025, INTERPOL issued the first Silver Notice, requested by Italy, which seeks information on the assets belonging to a senior member of the mafia.

A Silver Notice is subject to the same procedure and regulations as a Red Notice, meaning that there is also no duty to investigate the underlying merits of a Silver Notice.

The Silver Notice scheme is therefore also at risk of abuse by Member States. In addition, the risks associated with a Silver Notice are like those of a Red Notice (such as arrest and subsequent extradition) however, they can also result in the confiscation of any funds or assets obtained as a result of criminal activity.

If the Silver Notice system is similarly abused, this risks potentially innocent individuals being deprived of legitimate assets by nefarious state actors. The outcome of the Pilot Scheme will be presented at the 93rd General Assembly in due course to consider whether to make the scheme permanent.

How we can help

These Notices can be successfully challenged. The best course is to contact a lawyer with experience of challenging Red Notices. Lawyers at JMW have a proven track record in successful challenges before the CCF.