Interpol is widely perceived as a supranational police force empowered to investigate, arrest, and pursue individuals across borders. That perception is incorrect. Interpol conducts no investigations, determines neither guilt nor innocence, and possesses no arrest powers. It is neither a “global police authority” nor a judicial body issuing warrants against convicted offenders.
Yet, despite this formally limited mandate, Interpol exerts significant influence in international criminal cooperation. Its instruments - particularly Red Notices and diffusions - can trigger arrests, restrict liberty, and severely affect the personal, professional, and economic lives of the individuals concerned.
Interpol’s authority lies not in coercion, but in coordination. By facilitating the circulation of requests between National Central Bureaus (“NCBs”) and maintaining a centralised database of wanted persons, Interpol amplifies national proceedings on a global scale. A single decision by the General Secretariat to publish a Red Notice may result in immediate arrest in one jurisdiction, travel restrictions in another, and prolonged legal uncertainty elsewhere.
This operational impact raises fundamental questions concerning legality, proportionality, discretion, transparency, and the protection of fundamental rights.
This article examines the legal framework governing the publication of Interpol Red Notices, with particular focus on the minimum criteria for publication and the discretionary powers of the General Secretariat under Section 2 of Interpol’s Rules on the Processing of Data (“RPD”).
Interpol’s Role in the Apprehension of Wanted Persons
Interpol performs two principal functions in relation to wanted individuals. First, it maintains a centralised database containing information supplied by its member countries. Second, it acts as a secure communication channel between NCBs, particularly in urgent cases involving requests for provisional arrest.
Although Interpol does not execute arrests, its actions frequently have immediate and tangible consequences for personal liberty. Transmission of data may result in arrest at border checkpoints. Inclusion in Interpol’s systems may lead to visa refusals, banking restrictions, reputational harm, professional exclusion, and prolonged uncertainty.
These consequences often materialise before any judicial authority in the state of arrest has examined the merits of the case. It is precisely because of these effects that Interpol’s internal safeguards and review mechanisms warrant rigorous legal scrutiny.
Red Notices: Definition and Purpose
Contrary to public belief, a Red Notice is not an international arrest warrant. It is an alert issued by Interpol’s General Secretariat at the request of an NCB of one of the 196 Interpol member countries. Its purpose is to seek the location of a wanted person and to request their detention, arrest, or restriction of movement for the purposes of extradition, surrender, or similar lawful action (Αrt. 82 of the RPD). Nonetheless, a Red Notice does not create a binding obligation upon the remaining member states to arrest the individual concerned. Its legal effect depends entirely on domestic law. Some jurisdictions treat a Red Notice as sufficient basis for provisional arrest; others require prior judicial authorisation.
In practice, however, Red Notices frequently function as de facto arrest triggers, particularly in systems operating automatic or semi-automatic enforcement mechanisms. The formal absence of binding force does not diminish their practical impact.
Minimum Criteria for Red Notice’s Publication: Article 83(1) RPD
1. Serious Ordinary-Law Crime
The first and most fundamental requirement is that the offence concerned qualifies as a “serious ordinary-law crime”. This concept is not expressly defined in Article 83 of the RPD. Nonetheless, Interpol has historically limited its activities to ordinary criminal matters to preserve its neutrality and comply with Article 3 of its Constitution, which prohibits involvement in political, military, religious, or racial matters.
Article 83(1)(a)(i) of the RPD explicitly excludes certain categories of offences from eligibility for Red Notices. These include offences that raise controversial issues relating to: (a) behavioural or cultural norms, (b) offences relating to family or private matters, and (c) offences of an administrative nature or arising from private disputes, unless they are linked to serious crime or organised criminal activity.
The first category covers offences such as prostitution, surrogacy-related conduct, pornography offences not linked to serious crime, personal drug use, and offences affecting honour. The second category concerns offences such as adultery, abortion, euthanasia, child support and alimony disputes, and certain parental child-abduction cases involving conflicting custody decisions. The third category encompasses offences of an administrative nature or arising from private disputes, such as traffic and licensing violations, labour-law infringements, defamation, unfunded cheques, and regulatory or financial breaches lacking personal gain, corruption, fraud, or serious harm. Although this non-exhaustive list provides guidance, it does not constrain the Secretariat’s discretion in individual cases.
2. Penalty Thresholds
The second criterion relates to the seriousness of the penalty attached to the offence. Where a person is sought for prosecution, the conduct must be punishable by a maximum deprivation of liberty of at least two years or a more serious penalty. Where a person is sought to serve a sentence, the individual must have been sentenced to at least six months’ imprisonment, or at least six months of the sentence must remain to be served.
These thresholds are intended to ensure proportionality and to prevent the misuse of Interpol mechanisms for minor or trivial offences. However, as discussed below, compliance with these thresholds does not automatically preclude the exercise of discretion in exceptional cases.
3. Interest in International Police Cooperation
The third criterion is broadly formulated: the request must be “of interest for the purposes of international police cooperation”. This requirement is inherently flexible and grants the General Secretariat considerable latitude. Almost any cross-border criminal allegation can arguably be framed as engaging international police cooperation, particularly in an era of global mobility and transnational financial activity. This criterion establishes a general eligibility requirement that serves as a broad baseline filter and is ordinarily satisfied when a request involves cross-border elements or the potential involvement of more than one jurisdiction. In practice, it sets a low threshold and serves primarily to confirm that Interpol’s involvement is justified ratione materiae.
4. Discretion of the Interpol General Secretariat
Moving forward to Paragraph (b) of Article 83, the RPD grants an exceptional discretionary power to the General Secretariat. Particularly, it allows the Secretariat to authorise publication of a Red Notice even where the core substantive criteria in (i) (serious ordinary-law crime) and/or (ii) (penalty thresholds) are not met, provided that, following consultation with the requesting National Central Bureau or international entity, the General Secretariat considers the notice to be of particular importance to international police cooperation. Unlike criterion (iii), which operates as a routine condition of admissibility, paragraph (b) explicitly permits departure from otherwise mandatory legal thresholds on the basis of perceived operational importance.
The notion of what constitutes a matter of “particular importance” to international police cooperation is not specified in the Rules, nor in any Decisions of the Commission for the Control of Interpol’s Files (“CCF”). It is instead deliberately framed in broad and open-ended terms, allowing the General Secretariat to address situations that could not reasonably have been anticipated at the time of the Rules’ adoption.
Taken cumulatively, this drafting choice confers upon the General Secretariat an exceptionally wide margin of discretion. While a degree of discretion is inherent in administrative decision-making, discretion of such breadth risks undermining legal certainty and foreseeability, which lie at the very core of the right to a fair trial as enshrined in Article 10 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, within the normative framework in which the Organisation pursues its objectives under Article 2(1) of its Constitution.
Minimum Data Requirements: Article 83(2) RPD
In addition to substantive criteria, Article 83(2) of the RPD imposes strict requirements concerning the information that must accompany a Red Notice request. Except of the Identification Data, the requesting NCB must provide a clear and succinct summary of the facts, detailing the alleged criminal conduct, time, and location. The request must specify the charges, the applicable legal provisions, the maximum possible penalty or sentence, and reference a valid arrest warrant or judicial decision having the same effect.
Legal Review by the General Secretariat
Before publication, all Red Notices are subject to a legal review by the Interpol General Secretariat. Article 86 of the RPD emphasises that this review must ensure compliance with Interpol’s Constitution, particularly Articles 2 and 3. However, the Rules provide little transparency into how this review operates in practice.
First, the concept of a “legal review” is left open to interpretation. The RPD do not specify its scope, content, or methodology, nor do they clarify whether the assessment involves a substantive examination of the underlying facts or is limited to the requesting State’s allegations.
Second, the provision is further silent on the requirements of reason-giving and traceability. It neither obliges the General Secretariat to articulate the legal reasoning of its assessment nor to retain a record capable of meaningful ex post review by the Commission for the Control of Interpol’s Files. As a result, the review process remains opaque, reducing the obligation to conduct a legal review to a largely formalistic exercise.
INTERPOL’s Political Neutrality
Any serious examination of Red Notices must address the foundational principle of neutrality. Article 3 of Interpol’s Constitution provides unequivocally that it is strictly forbidden for the Organisation to undertake activities of a political, military, religious, or racial character.
The concepts of “political”, “military”, “religious” and “racial” is not self-defining. Their interpretation is guided by the Repository of Practice (3rd Edition, November 2024). That interpretative framework clarifies that Article 3 analysis is neither abstract nor formulaic. It is evidence-based, contextual and fact-sensitive. The assessments must move beyond formal classifications/categorisations and interrogate the real nature of the alleged criminal conduct.
In applying Article 3 of Interpol’s Constitution, In applying Article 3, the Organisation distinguishes between pure and relative offences. Pure offences are criminalised solely because of their political or analogous character and contain no ordinary-law element. They are typically directed against the State and affect exclusively public interests. Offences such as espionage fall squarely within this category and are, by their nature, incompatible with Interpol’s intervention.
Relative offences present a more complex assessment. These are acts that combine political elements with ordinary criminal components and may affect private as well as public interests. In such cases, the predominance test becomes determinative. The decisive inquiry is whether the political dimension outweighs the ordinary-law aspects of the case. The mere framing of charges as fraud, corruption, abuse of office, or financial crime does not insulate a request from scrutiny. A prosecution formally presented as economic misconduct may, in substance, constitute a politically motivated action.
The Organisation’s practice further confirms that the legal characterisation provided in a request for police cooperation cannot be treated as conclusive. Resolution AGN/63/RES/9 (1994) underscores that predominance must be determined by examining the underlying facts, even where those facts are described domestically as ordinary offences. Article 3 review becomes, therefore, substance-driven. Formal charges are evidential starting points but not decisive criteria for their criminal nature.
The wording of Article 3 reinforces this substantive approach. By referring to the “character” of the activity concerned, the Constitution requires an inquiry that transcends rigid offence taxonomy. Resolution AGN/53/RES/7 (1984) further underlines that each case must be examined separately, with due regard to its specific context. The assessment must therefore be holistic. It may encompass the status of the individual concerned, the broader political environment, patterns of similar requests from the same State, prior refusals in analogous cases, and the potential institutional implications for Interpol’s neutrality.
Finally, the Article 3 review is not confined to the four corners of the request. A Red Notice may require evaluation alongside related or contemporaneous requests issued by the same country, particularly where comparable notices have previously been denied. Context, pattern and institutional risk are legitimate and necessary considerations.
Yet, despite this structured and principled framework, politically motivated Red Notices continue to arise. The risk is most acute in the “grey zone” of the so-called relative offences, where ordinary-law elements coexist with political context. It is precisely in this space that the predominance test must operate with its greatest rigour, for it is here that the boundary between legitimate cooperation and political instrumentalisation becomes most fragile.
Final Remarks
Interpol Red Notices are not arrest warrants, nor are they issued under the same conditions as domestic arrest orders. They operate within Interpol’s own legal framework and are governed by specific provisions and criteria. Article 83 of the RPD establishes minimum safeguards while conferring a broad margin of discretion on the Interpol General Secretariat. This is not to imply that all Red Notices are issued unlawfully. This is to suggest that the flexibility of the rules creates uncertainty about whether all Red Notices are issued lawfully. The long-documented misuse of Interpol’s Red Notice system for political purposes provides concrete support to this concern.
