ODF President Lyudmyla Kozlovska, in her interview with the Spanish magazine elDiario.es, discussed the abuse of Interpol’s “red notice” by authoritarian states. Kozlovska also stressed that compensation enforcement should be made in order to reduce this abuse.
Throughout the interview, ODF President Kozlovska stated there is a systematic problem of abuse of Interpol’s powers by authoritarian states. One of the organization’s main abuse tools is ‘red notifications’, which are alerts to locate and detain certain people, oftentimes dissidents whose charges are politically motivated.
Kozlovska also addressed the use of other allied states for issuing multiple red notices on the same person by Kazakhstan as unprecedented. Although it was difficult to show that the country was behind this strategy, thanks to a large data breach, ODF collected numerous emails over a year which clearly proved that Kazakhstan was using other countries such as Russia and Ukraine to persecute people.
On the red notice process issue, ODF’s president pointed out the insufficiency of the control mechanism and blamed it since it is all automatic. States can publish any lie and if a name appears associated with terrorism, extremism, money laundering or any other accusation, that person will enter the list. Third states prefer to detain, check and then release, but that takes months, it destroys lives and helps regimes keep people isolated.
Kozlovska’s comment on Interpol’s annual General Assembly in Turkey, an authoritarian state, was that it “destroys the reputation of the organization and gives Turkey the possibility to show itself as a powerful state that all other countries turn to.”
Ms. Kozlovska also mentioned that, if a State notifies Interpol about a person, their document is no longer valid and they are unable to cross any borders, which is a new level of abuse. Lastly, Kozlovska suggested that there has to be a compensation fund against such abuses in order to increase the reputation of Interpol and force countries like Turkey, China, Kazakhstan or Russia to pay.
