INTERPOL Red Notice Despite Asylum or Refugee Status?

By Dr. Julius Hagen, Attorney at Law

What refugee status changes within INTERPOL

INTERPOL’s General Assembly formally endorsed its refugee policy through Resolution GA-2017-86-RES-09. Subject to national law and confidentiality requirements, member countries are encouraged to inform INTERPOL or the CCF when refugee status is granted and when an asylum application has been decided. The INTERPOL Refugee Resolution therefore addresses the processing of international police alerts. It is not an automatic deletion rule, does not replace a national asylum decision and does not determine the criminal merits of the allegation.

The review looks beyond the label

The relevant facts include the exact protection status, the country in which persecution is feared, the source of the data and the basis for the Notice or Diffusion. The refugee decision, asylum-file documents, any indication of a national arrest warrant and the chronology of flight, asylum proceedings, criminal proceedings and the international alert may all matter.

Article 3: political persecution and ordinary-law crime

Article 3 of INTERPOL’s Constitution prohibits the Organization from engaging in activities of a political, military, religious or racial character. The assessment is case-specific. Political pressure, a change of government or a person’s position in exile are important facts, but do not alone establish that a Notice is impermissibly political. Conversely, an allegation labelled corruption or a commercial offence may be used for political purposes. INTERPOL describes this as a comparison between the ordinary-law character of the case and its political elements. The official Article 3 materials provide the starting point for that assessment.

Deletion from INTERPOL does not resolve every national risk

The CCF reviews only whether data processing in INTERPOL’s Information System complies with INTERPOL’s rules. A deletion there does not decide national files, bilateral information channels, a national extradition case or how a particular border state will respond. An application should therefore address the INTERPOL record and the national or extradition risks in parallel. The CCF’s current procedural information explains access, correction and deletion requests and the limits of the Commission’s competence.