In 2018, Senior Judge of the United States Federal Court for the Third Circuit Honorable Jane Richards Roth, dissenting over the opinion of the majority in Habeas Corpus action brought by one of the Russian dissident Borbot v. Warden Hudson Cty. Corr. Facility, 906 F.3d 274 (3d Cir. 2018), noted:
The judicial branch of our federal Government should be sheltered from the political maneuverings of foreign nations. These matters are best left to the executive and legislative branches. Nevertheless, there are occasions when it becomes evident that the machinations of a foreign government have, inadvertently to the courts, become entangled in the judicial process.
It has become clear that the Russian government has been employing Interpol alerts or "Red Notices" to pursue and harass opponents of the Russian regime. See, e.g., The Atlantic, July 30, 2018; The Atlantic, May 30, 2018; The New York Times, November 6, 2016; The Globe and Mail, September 25, 2015. A member country of Interpol, such as Russia, can request that Interpol issue an arrest warrant to aid in capturing a fugitive. Interpol will then issue a Red Notice, and, on the basis of that notice, the fugitive can be arrested by the authorities in another member country where the fugitive may be located. This is designed to be an important tool in fighting crime. It is a tool, however, that has been misappropriated by the Russian government to punish political opponents who travel abroad.
Opponents of the present Russian regime have been arrested in countries around the world on the basis of a Red Notice. They then have had extreme difficulty in convincing the authorities of the arresting countries that they are not criminals but are being pursued by the Russian government for political reasons.
To me, the Honorable Senior Judge Jane Richards Roth described the issue as precisely as it could be described. But the Honorable Senior Judge was not alone in her findings.
On August 1st, 2018, approximately during the same period when the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and the U.S. Department of Justice competed each other to see who ruined more lives of asylum seekers who openly asked the United States for protection against corrupted authorities from their home countries and who were persecuted with the INTERPOL assistance, Senator Lindsey Graham introduced the bill S.3336 within 115th Congress titled Defending American Security from Kremlin Aggression Act of 2018. This bill was supported by Mr. MENENDEZ, Mr. GARDNER, Mr. CARDIN, Mr. MCCAIN, and Mrs. SHAHEEN. Section 707 of this bill, addressed "ABUSE AND MISUSE BY THE RUSSIAN FEDERATION OF INTERPOL RED NOTICES AND RED DIFFUSIONS" and subsection 5(b) started with the following:
(5) Some INTERPOL member countries have used the INTERPOL’s processes, including the red notice and red diffusions mechanisms, for activities of a political character.
(b) SENSE OF CONGRESS.—It is the sense of Congress that the Government of the Russian Federation has abused and misused INTERPOL’s red notice and red diffusion mechanisms for overtly political purposes and activities such as intimidating, harassing, and persecuting political opponents.
This bill was not passed. However, in 2019 Congressman Steve Cohen introdused Transnational Repression Accountability and Prevention Act of 2019 or TRAP Act of 2019 that was modified and introduced as a TRAP Act of 2021, provisions of which, in its turn, were incorporated into other bills which were finally enacted into public law.
The TRAP Act establishes requirements related to United States cooperation with International Criminal Police Organization (INTERPOL) communications. Specifically, no U.S. agency or department may extradite an individual based solely on an INTERPOL notice. In addition, the U.S. Department of Justice and the Department of State must take certain actions to support reforms to increase transparency of INTERPOL, including with respect to its communications. The TRAP Act also requires reports on countries that abuse INTERPOL communications for political motives and other unlawful purposes.
At a first glance, it seems like it is a little bit weird that the United States makes a repeated attempts to protect its democracy and its Judicial system from the INTERPOL which is presumptively was created to ensure the assistance between criminal departments of member countries in order to secure the law based on a spirit of Universal Declaration of Human Rights in international space. However, for those people who know the real situation, it is clear that the efforts, which the United States Congress has spent on this issue were not spent for no reason.
Indeed, for the last decade, little by little INTERPOL is getting turned into a convenient appendage of corrupted and totalitarian regimes caused by INTERPOL's indifference and consequently, violation of its own Constitution and procedural rules for data processing (RPD). More and more cases emerged exposing publicly that the INTERPOL Red Notices were issued on the basis of politically motivated persecution on the request of those countries, where the Court system and criminal proceedings are not independent at all and their regimes are considered as totalitarian and repressive. And INTERPOL, instead of conducting a profound examination of such requests, blindly, disregarding the provisions of INTERPOL's own Constitution and RPD, accepted such requests for Issuance of the Red Notices for innocent people who were portrayed by politically motivated national persecution as criminals world-widely.
When INTERPOL is addressed with questions like why the INTERPOL Red Notice was issued for one or another political activist the official representatives of INTERPOL try to shield themselves behind the main principle of INTERPOL that is - neutrality.
However, the INTERPOL's imagination about the "neutrality" is so perverted. The neutrality behind which INTERPOL shields its negligent and unlawful issuance to issue Red Notices for some people actually must be applied to the point when they receives the requests from the member country portraying the person as a criminal. The INTERPOL should be neutral in order not to treat a person as a criminal by blindly, without any additional examination, taking the position of the government requesting a Red Notice based on national arrest warrant.
The INTERPOL must not treat the person as a real criminal since INTERPOL - is an organization bearing the proud name of International Criminal Police and obligated to conduct their authority in a spirit of UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights. (see Article 2 of the INTERPOL's Constitution) The INTERPOL must abide by the principle prescribed by the Article 11 of the Universal Declaration promulgating:
Everyone charged with a penal offence has the right to be presumed innocent until proved guilty according to law in a public trial at which he has had all the guarantees necessary for his defense.
Moreover, Article 3 of the INTERPOL's Constitution mandates the following:
It is strictly forbidden for the Organization to undertake any intervention or activities of a political, military, religious or racial character.
Notably, in 2012, when the Secretary General of the INTERPOL was Ronald K. Noble - an American law enforcement officer, the second edition of the Repository of Practice: Application of Article 3 of INTERPOL’s Constitution was issued. This document is a profound reference guide for practitioners including real-life examples from INTERPOL’s practice on the principles that must guide the interpretation and application of Article 3 in the context of the processing of data.
When I personally read this Repository the first time I noticed that it was dated as of 2012. I rushed to search on the internet if there had been any new editions issued by INTERPOL since more than ten years have passed after all…
As it turned out, the American law enforcement officer who served as the Secretary General of the INTERPOL at that time was the last person who while occupying his position indeed was responsible and cared about dignity and integrity of the INTERPOL’s international activities and lawfulness of the data processing.
By INTERPOL's procedures, to issue Red Notice, making the person wanted all over the world, the National Central Bureaus (NCB) of member countries must provide only a national arrest warrant. As I truly believe, after Ronald K. Noble retired, INTERPOL simply accepted everything on "conveyor" principle without any additional examination, and the list of INTERPOL Red Notices became a sort of international platform like AMAZON where the Police Departments of member countries can advertise their national arresting warrants which are merely redesigned only visually under the unified INTERPOL's design. See what the Federal Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit explained:
"Since a Red Notice is not independently vetted for factual and legal justification, its reliability corresponds with that of the foreign nation's arrest warrant.” See Villalobos Sura v. Garland, No. 20-71839, 2021 WL 3627251 (2021).
Relatively recently, the modern Russian Federation as well as the authorities of other countries with totalitarian regimes realized the same thing and came up with the idea to manipulate the U.S. Court system and Enforcement Departments by spreading its punitive corrupt system using INTERPOL's negligence to the unique mandate and trust they were granted by international community. Similar to the term "laundering money" I would call this scheme as the "laundering of corruption."
The scheme is a pretty simple. INTERPOL has its NCB in each or almost each member country. Usually NCB is a subdivision of the Departments of Justice or department empowered with similar authory. In Russia it is the General Prosecutor's Office of Russian Federation. The headquarter of INTERPOL that is in Lyon, France receives all national requests to issue Red Notices from NCBs. INTERPOL has the highest level of trust and confidence toward documents which are received from their own branches - NCBs.
However, there is a pretty noticeable detail in this flawed structure. (!!!) All NCBs staffed with the national law enforcement officers who conduct their authority under national laws and are ordered by the national superiors. Thus, just imagine what the probative value or the extent of reliability the national warrants coming from NCB of Russia, Eretria, Venezuela, Iran, Belarus or others with similar regimes have.
Could anyone in the most fertile imagination assume that Iranian or Russian, or Belarussian enforcement law officer, who spent all his life being brainwashed to the core of his or her bones by national propaganda expressing a hatred to the international institutes created by western initiative, would stand up and claim that he will never execute the superior's unlawful order to persecute someone illegally because it is not consonant with a spirit of Universal Declaration of Human Rights? What a joke it is!
Thus, totalitarian regimes including Russian officials realized that by packing the NCB with their national employees the NCB becomes a sort of miracle box where the unreliable, non-probative, national warrants for arrest issued by corrupted judges working in the national court system turns into the most reliable and probative international documents targeting their political opponents all over the world. Thus, using the presumption of trust and reliability toward documents each member country provides to INTERPOL through NCB the INTERPOL became the biggest hub of laundering corruption and its spreading throughout the world.
Significantly, the Article 2(1) of INTERPOL's Constitution mandates that INTERPOL should "ensure and promote the widest possible mutual assistance between all criminal police authorities within the limits of the laws existing in the different countries and in the spirit of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights". The key-words are "assistance between all criminal police authorities."
Thus, by clear provisions of INTERPOL's own Constitution, the INTERPOL's authority and purpose of its existence are limited to the extent of providing assistance only between CRIMINAL Police. There is no other function and authority that can be revealed from the provisions prescribed INTERPOL's Constitution except to “ensure and promote the widest possible mutual assistance between all criminal police authorities.”
Nevertheless, nowadays INTERPOL "trades" the personal data possessed by them for the people to the left and right by providing everything to the country departments, which conduct their authorities over CIVIL matters. It is not clear for what reason and under what grounds INTERPOL self-extended its authority and started providing assistence to the CIVIL departments such as, for example, the subdivisions of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security conducting their authority over the immigration maters.
The existing United States law recognizes the Immigration proceedings as not criminal but civil and all Federal Departments involving in the immigration proceedings are also civil, they are not criminal police at all. See the Fact Sheet of the United States Department of Justice which unambiguously established that “Immigration court hearings are civil administrative proceedings.”
***when I wrote that the INTERPOL "trades" of personal data I just mean that INTERPOL provides personal data to those officials to whom INTERPOL do not have any authority to provide. I do not mean the part of the personal data that is publicly available on INTERPOL's website. I mean that usually the INTERPOL possesses some attachments prepared by the NCB. In most cases - it is a national warrants for arrest or similar accompanying documents.***
The INTERPOL assistance with the civil U.S. Departments enforcing a civil immigration proceeding especially those, which are based on the political grounds – it is utmost blatant violation of the principle of the neutrality enshrined by the Article 3 of the INTERPOL's Constitution along with the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
The numerous facts of such assistance is confirmed on both sides the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service which is repeatedly confirming that they are provided with people's detailed personal data by INTERPOL, and INTERPOL never refused such unlawful assistance.
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Thus, INTERPOL for some uncertain reason exceeds its authority and power established in its own Constitution by assisting with civil U.S. Departments by that, undertakes intervention on civil immigration cases of people who was recognized as an asylum seekers claiming for political persecution..
INTERPOL, when it exposes personal data on any person to any governmental entity, must make sure that the personal information and data about the person will be used only for CRIMINAL matters but not for civil proceedings. To do that INTERPOL must stamp every page with the information claiming that these documents is admissible only for criminal proceedings. In this case the asylum seekers would be safeguarded from the INTERPOL illegal intervention on their cases because any adequate attorney would claim the documents stamped by such information inadmissible for civil matters.
This post is based on my own experience and expresses my own opinion. While I was illegally arrested and detained by the Department of Homeland Security on the basis of Interpol Red Notice alone in the United States, I met a lot of people from China, Russia, Armenia and others whose asylum cases were ruined by the INTERPOL's intervention the representative of which talking too much about their neutrality but rare abide by this principle.
Moreover, since I was interested in legal matters and experience, I asked those people for a permission to read their national official charging documents containing a description of the alleged violations under their national criminal code, which in most cases were palpably fabricated even on prima facia evaluation. The context of those accusations was simply irrational and rambling and made no sense at all.
Nevertheless, INTERPOL did not care about the context of the national accusations and such an approach of exercising its power devaluates the INTERPOL's integrity at all because as the U.S. Federal Court noticed INTERPOL's "reliability corresponds with that of the foreign nation's arrest warrant.” As such, INTERPOL does not have its own principles because if the corrupted authorities of one country request INTERPOL to make innocent person a worldwide criminal, INTERPOL, while shouting out loudly that they are neutral organization, will issue a Red Notice for the name of innocent person without any hesitation. Should this conduct be respectable? I guess certainly no...
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