Collateral Effects of Red Notices

In our final post in the series on the CCF’s data as reported in its annual report last year, today we’ll consider what happens to a case while it is under consideration by the CCF.

The Commission reported that, in 112 of the 346 admissible complaints,

…access to data recorded in INTERPOL’s files concerning the

The United States Department of Justice Board of Immigration Appeals recently ruled that a Red Notice “may constitute reliable evidence that indicates the serious nonpolitical crime bar for asylum and withholding of removal applies to an alien.”

This means that the Red Notice itself may be viewed by immigration officials as a sufficient reason to

When an individual is wanted by any member country of INTERPOL, international travel always poses a risk of detention.

  • When a member country uses its access to INTERPOL’s databases, it should be alerted to an individual’s status as the subject of a notice.
  • Member countries handle such “hits” differently, with some treating a Red

One of the most frequent concerns cited by our Red Notice clients is what could happen even if they succeed in their efforts to remove a Red Notice. Most people who challenge Red Notices do so because they have tried to resolve the matter at the country of origin and failed, or because the country

Clients frequently ask how they can have an INTERPOL Red Notice if they are not listed on the Wanted page of INTERPOL’s website.

The answer is that the vast majority of Red Notices are unpublished. INTERPOL’s currently available data, here, tells us that

“[t]here are currently approximately 58,000 valid Red Notices, of which some 7,000

INTERPOL’s CCF (the Commission for the Control of INTERPOL’s Files) has made its most recent Annual Report available online, here.  In the 2017 Annual Report, which was officially published at the 2018 General Assembly meeting, the CCF covered a variety of topics, from recent statutory changes to the duties of the two chambers.

Among

One of the primary concerns of people who are Red Notice subjects is what will happen to them if they are detained at a border. A reader recently posed  this variation of that frequent question:

What happens if you do not have a red notice at this moment, but let’s assume you board a flight

Let’s start with the specific good news: Fair Trials International obtained the removal of a Red Notice for current leader of the World Uyghur Congress, Dolkun Isa, who fled China in the 1990s and was pursued by Chinese authorities through INTERPOL for charges that were widely viewed as being politically motivated.

Mr. Isa, a dissident

Why would a Red Notice subject want a request for removal of that notice to remain confidential? If you were a wanted person who was innocent, wouldn’t you want to shout it from the rooftops, for everyone to hear? The answers to these questions are more nuanced than one might initially think.

By the time

Under the leadership of its current Chairman,  Vitalie Pirlog, the Commission for the Control of INTERPOL’s Files (“CCF”) has proven in this year’s decisions that it is serious about holding National Central Bureaus to their obligations under INTERPOL’s rules.

In his speech at this year’s General Assembly, Chairman Pirlog reminded INTERPOL’s membership that the CCF