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Resolution 2161 (2017)
Abusive recourse to the Interpol system: the need for more stringent legal safeguards
1. The Parliamentary Assembly stresses
the importance of Interpol as an efficient instrument for international
co-operation in the fight against transnational crime, including
terrorism.
2. Interpol is based on mutual assistance among national law-enforcement
authorities and should function with full neutrality and respect
for the human rights of suspects.
3. The International Notices system allows police in member countries
to share critical crime-related information. Police can use notices
to alert law-enforcement bodies in other countries of potential
threats or to ask for assistance in solving crimes. “Red Notices”,
in particular, are used to seek assistance in locating and arresting
a person wanted by a national jurisdiction or an international tribunal,
with a view to extradition. The number of Red Notices has increased
dramatically over the last decade.
4. Article 2 of its constitution requires Interpol to act in
the spirit of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and Article
3 strictly prohibits any intervention or activities of a political,
military, religious or racist character. In a number of cases in
recent years, however, Interpol and its Red Notice system have been abused
by some member States in the pursuit of political objectives, in
order to repress freedom of expression or to persecute members of
the political opposition beyond their borders.
5. Red Notices have a serious negative impact on the human rights
of targeted persons, including the rights to liberty and security
and the right to a fair trial. Red Notices should therefore be requested
by National Central Bureaus (NCBs) and circulated by Interpol only
when there are serious grounds for suspicion against the targeted
person. These grounds should be verified following procedures designed
to minimise the possibility for abuse, without hindering international
police co-operation in the vast majority of legitimate cases.
6. Targeted persons cannot successfully challenge Red Notices
before any national or international courts. This jurisdictional
immunity can only be justified insofar as an internal appeals mechanism
provides an effective remedy, in accordance with applicable human
rights standards. In this respect, Interpol’s Commission for the Control
of Files (CCF) has been criticised for being ill-equipped to deal
with the large and growing number of complaints and their complexity.
7. The Assembly notes that Interpol has reacted to these criticisms
by engaging in a dialogue including civil society. Interpol’s Working
Group on the Processing of Information submitted a number of reform
proposals adopted at Interpol’s General Assembly in Bali (Indonesia)
in November 2016. Recent improvements, including those decided in
Bali, include:
7.1. further strengthening
Interpol’s internal vetting procedures before Red Notices are published,
by setting up a task force consisting of lawyers, police officers
and analysts;
7.2. appointing a data protection officer within Interpol’s
secretariat general;
7.3. strengthening the CCF, whose new statute entered into
force in March 2017, in particular by separating its advisory function
from its appeals function, increasing the number of members of the appeals
chamber to five, setting clear timetables for its work, making its
findings binding on Interpol and increasing the resources at its
disposal.
8. The Assembly welcomes these reforms as steps in the right
direction. It stresses the importance of their implementation and
calls on Interpol to continue improving its Red Notice procedure
in order to prevent and redress abuses even more effectively, including
by:
8.1. further strengthening the
preventive checks before Red Notices are circulated, in particular
by:
8.1.1. increasing the capacity of Interpol’s task force
entrusted with such checks by bolstering the resources placed at
its disposal;
8.1.2. ensuring that information on relevant cases made available
by international or regional intergovernmental human rights bodies
(in particular the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees,
the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights and the competent
bodies of the Council of Europe) and, if appropriate, by non-governmental
human rights organisations is duly taken into account;
8.1.3. publishing sufficiently detailed, authoritative interpretations
(“repositories of practice”) of Articles 2 and 3 of the constitution
and of Interpol’s policy in refugee and asylum cases;
8.1.4. re-examining Red Notices periodically to ensure that they
are deleted when they have not given rise to successful extradition
within a reasonable amount of time;
8.1.5. examining with particular care repetitive Red Notice requests
emanating from the same NCB targeting the same person after earlier
requests were either rejected by Interpol or deleted following a
decision of the CCF;
8.2. strengthening the CCF as an appeals mechanism by:
8.2.1. making it fully independent from Interpol, in particular
by continuing to ensure that staff members dealing with preventive
checks are not involved in assessing complaints against Red Notices
which had passed these checks;
8.2.2. increasing its capacity, in particular by making sufficient
staff available with expertise in the fields of human rights and
criminal law and procedure;
8.2.3. ensuring that the CCF fulfils minimum procedural standards,
in particular by enabling the targeted persons and their lawyers
to be informed of and to comment on the reasons for the Red Notice
request given by the requesting NCB;
8.2.4. ensuring that the CCF responds to and resolves appeals
within a reasonable time, taking into account the gravity of the
consequences of a Red Notice for a targeted person;
8.2.5. ensuring that the CCF publishes its decisions, provided
the applicants agree; the decisions shall be sufficiently motivated
in order to contribute to the development of consistent and predictable
case law;
8.3. dealing appropriately with NCBs which have repeatedly
abused the system for requesting publication of Red Notices, in
particular by:
8.3.1. keeping statistics on Red Notices
filtered out upstream by Interpol’s preventive mechanism and downstream
by successful challenges before the CCF;
8.3.2. subjecting new Red Notice requests by NCBs that have previously
submitted a high number of abusive requests to more intensive prior
scrutiny;
8.3.3. prioritising scrutiny by the CCF of complaints made against
Red Notices requested by NCBs that have previously submitted a high
number of abusive requests;
8.3.4. charging NCBs that submit a high number of abusive requests
for the additional budgetary costs generated by the more intensive
scrutiny of their requests and of complaints made against their
requests;
8.4. setting up a compensation fund for victims of abusive
or otherwise unjustified Red Notices financed by member States in
proportion to the number of unjustified Red Notices emanating from
their NCBs.
9. The Assembly calls on all member States of the Council of
Europe to:
9.1. set a positive example
by ensuring that Red Notice requests from their own NCBs clearly
specify the targeted persons, the suspected crime and the elements
of proof linking the targeted person to the alleged crime;
9.2. swiftly communicate to Interpol relevant information on
persons targeted by Red Notices (for example, the granting of political
asylum and judicial decisions refusing extradition);
9.3. refrain from carrying out arrests on the basis of Red
Notices when they have serious concerns that the notice in question
could be abusive;
9.4. make use of their influence within Interpol to ensure
the implementation of necessary reforms so that Interpol respects
human rights and the rule of law whilst remaining an effective tool
for legitimate international police co-operation.