Interpol does not run manhunts of its own. It links police forces in 196 countries, while each national force stays in charge of investigating and enforcing its own law, UN News reports. The best-known form of that request is the red notice, which the Guardian calls the closest thing the world has to an international arrest warrant.
The film version gets this wrong. Encyclopedia Britannica notes that Interpol agents making arrests would trespass on the sovereignty of member countries, so they do not.
How the request travels
According to Encyclopedia Britannica, each member country runs a National Central Bureau, a clearing house through which its police talk to Interpol’s headquarters in Lyon and to forces elsewhere. Britannica says a red notice rests on a warrant issued at home. At a bureau’s request, Interpol circulates it to members, asking for the person’s arrest and extradition.
Red is one of several colours. Yellow notices help find missing children, and black notices concern unidentified bodies. Interpol says on its own site that its databases also hold fingerprints, DNA profiles and facial images.
What happens before the notice
Most hunts start at home. In Britain, police first try to stop a suspect leaving. Marking someone as internationally wanted on the Police National Computer alerts every UK port and, via the Schengen Information System II, every port across Europe, the BBC explained in the Jack Shepherd case.
That only works at official crossings. Forged papers or smaller ports can get round it. The BBC cited Shane O’Brien, wanted over a 2015 murder, who left on a private flight from Biggin Hill. Czech police arrested him in February 2017 while he used fake Italian documents, then released him before they learned who he was.
How often it is used
Use of red notices rose about tenfold in two decades, from roughly 1,200 in 2000 to almost 12,000 in 2020, the Guardian reported in 2021. It counted about 66,000 active red notices at the time.
UN News gives an example of cross-border work that succeeded. Police in Côte d’Ivoire and Switzerland, coordinated through Interpol, took apart a phishing operation that had taken more than $1.4 million from Swiss victims.
When the system is turned on critics
The same channel can carry a political request dressed as a criminal one. Bruno Min of the campaign group Fair Trials told DW that a state seeking a red notice for persecution would never say so. It would frame the charge as fraud or another ordinary offence.
The Guardian told the story of Alexey Kharis, a businessman living in California, whom Russia sought through Interpol on fraud charges. Ted Bromund, who testified in his case, said the charges lacked substance and that the notice proved only that Russia had filled in the form. US authorities still used it to call Kharis a flight risk, and he spent 15 months in Californian prisons.
Freedom House, a US rights group, puts Russia’s share of public red notices at 38 per cent. Interpol does not publish how many requests it turns down, so nobody outside knows how many active notices rest on political charges.
Campaigners have also accused states of using Interpol’s database of lost and stolen passports to strand dissidents abroad. DW reported that Turkey did this with hundreds of thousands of passports after the 2016 coup attempt.
Why it exists at all
The organisation dates from 1923, and it was set up largely so that people could not commit a crime in one country and escape to another. It barely survived its first misuse. In 1938 the Nazis ousted its president and later moved it to Berlin.
