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An INTERPOL Red Notice is a request from one country, transmitted through INTERPOL, asking police forces in every other member country to locate and provisionally arrest a named person. Although not an arrest warrant in its own right, a Red Notice is in practice treated as one in many jurisdictions. It can lead to detention at a border, refusal of asylum, the closure of bank accounts, the loss of professional registration, and lasting reputational harm, often before any independent body has reviewed the underlying request.
This guide explains how Red Notices can be challenged and removed. It covers what a Red Notice is, how to find out whether one has been issued, what can be done pre-emptively where one has not yet been published, the grounds on which a Notice can be deleted, how the process works at INTERPOL’s Commission for the Control of Files, how long it takes, what happens after a decision, and why specialist advice is worth taking.
For a shorter primer on how INTERPOL operates, see What is INTERPOL? and What is a Red Notice?
INTERPOL is an information-sharing organisation, not a police force. Its members are the police agencies of 196 countries, and its function is to facilitate cooperation and the exchange of information between them. Each member country has a National Central Bureau, which acts as the interface between domestic police and INTERPOL itself.
A Red Notice is a request, made at the initiative of a requesting state, for the location and provisional arrest of a named individual pending extradition or similar action. The Notice carries no independent legal authority to arrest; that has to come from the law of the country in which the person is found. Even so, many jurisdictions treat a Red Notice as sufficient grounds to detain, at least for long enough to consider an extradition request, and some treat it as the equivalent of a warrant outright.
INTERPOL also operates the Diffusion system. A Diffusion is, in substance, the same instrument as a Notice, but is transmitted directly by a National Central Bureau to others without INTERPOL’s central review. Red Diffusions have the same practical effect as Red Notices and are challenged on the same grounds.
Red is the most familiar Notice colour, but INTERPOL operates several others, each with a different purpose. In brief: Blue Notices seek information about a person; Yellow help locate missing people; Green warn of a person considered a threat; Purple share information about criminal methods; Black request information about unidentified bodies; and Silver, introduced in 2025, trace assets. There is also a joint Notice with the UN Security Council for sanctions targets. The Back to Basics guide to INTERPOL Notices explains each colour in more detail.
The remainder of this guide deals with Red Notices and Red Diffusions, which are the instruments most often used as tools of harassment and political pursuit, and which generate the majority of challenges before the CCF.
Many individuals only discover that a Red Notice exists when something goes wrong: a border arrest, the closure of a bank account, a refused visa, an unexpected difficulty with employment or licensing. INTERPOL publishes only a small fraction of Red Notices on its public website, and the majority of Notices issued by states that misuse the system are not made public.
Confirming whether a Notice exists can be done in a number of ways. The first is a search of INTERPOL’s public database; a negative result there does not, however, mean that no Notice exists. The second is a formal request to INTERPOL itself for access to any data the organisation holds about the individual. This is known as an access request and is one of the principal functions of the Commission for the Control of Files.
An access request can be made on its own, or as the first step in a wider strategy. Where the existence of a Notice is uncertain, an access request is often the right place to start.
Not every challenge takes place after a Red Notice has been issued. Where there is reason to believe a Notice may be on its way, it is often more effective to act before publication than after it. INTERPOL’s General Secretariat is required to review every proposed Red Notice against the organisation’s rules before it is published, and a properly prepared submission lodged in advance can shape that review. The Commission for the Control of Files can also be asked to consider preventive measures in the right circumstances.
Two routes are commonly used. The first is a formal request: a written submission to the CCF setting out the relevant background, the legal grounds on which any future Notice would be non-compliant, and the supporting evidence. Where the criteria for preventive measures are met, the CCF can place the file on the record so that, when the requesting state submits a Notice or Diffusion, the defence material is already in INTERPOL’s possession and is taken into account at the compliance review stage. In our experience this often results in the Notice being deleted before it goes live, or never being published at all.
The second route is preparatory. Where a formal preventive application is not yet feasible, because the basis for the future Notice cannot yet be set out with sufficient certainty, or because the requesting state has not yet acted, the work is to be ready to challenge the moment a Notice or Diffusion appears. That means having the legal submissions drafted, the supporting evidence assembled, and the monitoring in place to detect publication. Speed at that stage limits the damage a Notice can do.
Pre-emptive work is particularly important in relation to Diffusions, which bypass INTERPOL’s central compliance review. Because a Diffusion is transmitted directly by one National Central Bureau to others, the General Secretariat’s pre-publication review does not apply in the same way. A formal preventive file can still be lodged and is taken into account if and when the matter reaches the CCF, but the practical position is that being ready to act immediately on publication is often what makes the difference.
The circumstances in which pre-emptive action is worth considering include: a pending extradition request in another jurisdiction; a pending asylum or refugee determination where contact with the requesting state would expose the applicant to serious risk; media reporting suggesting that a Notice is imminent; a high-profile political or commercial dispute that has escalated, or appears likely to escalate, into criminal proceedings against the requested person; and travel restrictions, account closures, or unexpected encounters with police that suggest a sealed Notice or Diffusion may already exist.
Pre-emptive applications are not a guarantee against publication. Their effect depends on the strength of the case, the responsiveness of the CCF to the particular requesting state, and the speed with which the requesting state proceeds. They are, however, more effective than waiting for a Notice to appear and then working to undo its effects. Where the underlying case is strong and the evidence is in order, a well-prepared pre-emptive file is often the difference between never being arrested and spending months or years working to remove an active Notice.
INTERPOL is bound by its own internal law: its Constitution and, in particular, the Rules on the Processing of Data. Both contain protections for individuals who are the subject of a Red Notice, and a successful challenge ordinarily depends on demonstrating that the Notice fails to meet one or more of those standards.
The most important provisions are in two short articles of the Constitution. Article 2 requires that INTERPOL act in the spirit of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Article 3 prohibits INTERPOL from any intervention or activity of a political, military, religious or racial character. Together these articles mean that a Red Notice cannot be used for political persecution, nor to facilitate treatment that would breach human rights. The great majority of successful deletions are based on one or both.
Article 3 is the single most frequent and most successful ground of challenge. The applicable test, established by Resolution AGN/20/RES/11 of 1951 and refined in subsequent resolutions, is one of predominance: whether the political character of the request outweighs the ordinary criminal-law one. A Notice does not need to be exclusively political to fall within Article 3; the question is whether the political dimension predominates.
A Notice can have a predominantly political character even where the charges look like ordinary crimes. Fraud, money laundering, tax offences, embezzlement and similar charges are routinely used against political opponents, journalists, activists, refugees, and business figures who have fallen out of favour with a government. The surrounding context is decisive: the identity and role of the requested person, the timing of the prosecution, the procedural history in the requesting state, and the requesting state’s record on similar cases. The leaked CCF decision deleting the United States’ Red Notice against the late Yevgeny Prigozhin in 2020, on the basis that the request had a predominantly political dimension, is a useful published example of how the test operates in practice.
Article 3 challenges are typically supported by country reports from international human rights organisations and treaty bodies, decisions of courts in other countries refusing to extradite the requested person, asylum determinations recognising the person as a refugee, contemporaneous press coverage, and evidence of opposition political activity or human rights work. The more substantial and independent the supporting material, the more difficult it becomes for the requesting state to maintain that the case is one of ordinary criminality.
For an illustration of how Article 3 challenges arise in cases involving serial misusers of the Notice system, see Targeted by China Through INTERPOL? Your Options Explained and Political Persecution: Exploiting INTERPOL’s Database and Blue Notices for Authoritarian Agendas.
Article 2 of the Constitution requires that INTERPOL act in the spirit of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. A Red Notice can be deleted under Article 2 where the requested person faces a real risk of torture if returned to the requesting state, where they have been recognised as a refugee, where the trial in the requesting state was or would be manifestly unfair, or where the prosecution discriminates against them on grounds the Declaration prohibits.
Article 2 challenges are particularly strong where they are supported by a formal finding of an international body. A decision of the UN Committee Against Torture, of the European Court of Human Rights, or of a national refugee authority all carry significant weight. So do credible reports from international human rights monitors documenting patterns of abuse in the requesting state.
Although INTERPOL is not itself an extradition authority, the underlying premise of any Red Notice is that extradition is contemplated. Where extradition could not properly be ordered, because the conduct alleged does not amount to a criminal offence in the country in which the requested person is located, because the offence falls below the seriousness threshold for extradition, because the principle of double jeopardy applies, or because a court has already refused extradition on substantive grounds, the basis for the Notice falls away.
Decisions of national courts refusing extradition are valuable evidence in CCF applications. So are decisions of international courts. In WS v Bundesrepublik Deutschland the Grand Chamber of the Court of Justice of the European Union held that where a court in one Schengen Member State has made a determination of double jeopardy, other Member States are bound by it, and further arrest on a Red Notice in those circumstances would amount to an unlawful restriction on freedom of movement.
Independently of the constitutional grounds, INTERPOL’s Rules on the Processing of Data impose detailed requirements that every Red Notice must satisfy. The offence must be a serious ordinary law crime, not a private or family dispute. The applicable sentence must reach a specified threshold, broadly at least two years’ imprisonment if the requested person is sought for prosecution. The Notice must contain sufficient particulars of identity, sufficient particulars of the alleged offence, and a reference to a valid arrest warrant or judicial decision.
A significant number of Notices fail one or more of these requirements. INTERPOL has expressly excluded certain categories of case from the Red Notice system, of which bounced cheques are a longstanding example, although requests of that character continue to be made. Where the underlying matter is in substance a civil dispute, a debt-collection exercise, a family quarrel or a commercial disagreement, that alone is often sufficient ground for deletion.
INTERPOL’s own data is instructive. Of the Red Notice applications subjected to detailed scrutiny by its review processes, only a minority have been found fully compliant. The majority of contested Notices do not survive close examination against INTERPOL’s own rules.
Applications to delete a Red Notice or Diffusion are made in writing to the Commission for the Control of Files. The CCF is the part of INTERPOL responsible for deciding requests concerning personal data. It is described as independent of the General Secretariat, in the sense that it operates separately from INTERPOL’s executive branch, although it remains part of the organisation.
There is no oral hearing. The CCF meets at scheduled sessions, of which there are at least three a year, and decides applications on the documents put before it. The procedure is regulated by the Statute of the Commission, and the relevant forms and guidance are published on INTERPOL’s website.
A well-prepared application sets out, by reference to INTERPOL’s own internal law, why the Notice is non-compliant. The CCF is not concerned to re-try the underlying allegation; that is a matter for the courts of the requesting state and for any state asked to extradite. Its focus is the narrower question of whether the Notice should have been published and whether it should now be deleted. Submissions need to be framed accordingly.
The Statute of the CCF sets out indicative timescales. Within one month of receipt, the CCF should issue a decision on the admissibility of an application, that is, whether it meets the threshold for substantive consideration. Within four months of admissibility, the CCF should provide a response to any request for access to data. Within nine months of admissibility, a substantive decision on a request for deletion should follow.
These timescales are no longer being kept to. The CCF has acknowledged delays in processing applications and was granted additional funding by the General Assembly in November 2024 with a view to addressing the backlog. Realistic advice to clients is that a Red Notice challenge will typically take between twelve and eighteen months from start to finish, and sometimes longer in complex or contested cases. There is no formal mechanism for expediting a decision and no procedure for challenging the time a decision is taking.
Confidentiality at the CCF is a more complicated subject than first appears. Proceedings are confidential as between the applicant and INTERPOL. They are not published, they do not appear on a public docket, and the CCF will not disclose that an application has been made.
They are not, however, ordinarily confidential as against the requesting state. The CCF will usually consult the requesting state in the course of an application, share the substance of it, and invite a response. The requesting state will therefore typically know that an application has been made and will see what is said in support of it.
The consequences can be significant. Information shared with a hostile state can be used: to pursue family members, to bring additional charges, to amend or strengthen the original case, or, at the most serious end, to plan further action against the applicant. In asylum cases the risks are particularly acute; informing a persecuting state of an applicant’s location or of the circumstances of their flight can be catastrophic both for the applicant and for those connected to them.
It is possible to mark information as restricted, that is, provided to the CCF but not shared with the requesting state. The Commission will then balance that restriction against the requesting state’s right to a fair opportunity to respond and may take a less favourable view of the application if too much material is withheld. The judgement of what to disclose, what to restrict, and how to frame the application so that it remains persuasive without exposing the applicant is among the most consequential decisions in any case. In asylum cases we never share information with the requesting state and accept the consequences. In other cases, the balance depends on the facts.
There is a more detailed discussion of these issues in Confidentiality and INTERPOL’s CCF — Part One.
that carry weight include: decisions of courts in the requesting state and others; reports of the UN Committee Against Torture, the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention, the UN Special Rapporteurs, and other treaty bodies; reports of Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, and comparable organisations; expert reports on the law and practice of the requesting state; press coverage from credible outlets; refugee determinations; and witness statements from individuals with first-hand knowledge.
Marshalling the right material is one of the more demanding parts of the work. The Commission gives generic assertions little weight; what tends to be persuasive is specific, externally verifiable, contemporaneous evidence that bears directly on the points in issue.
If the CCF decides that a Notice is non-compliant, it directs the General Secretariat to delete the data. Implementation usually follows within a few weeks. The applicant is notified once deletion is complete.
Certain effects can outlast the deletion. National Central Bureaus and domestic police agencies may have retained copies of the data during the period the Notice was in force. Banks, employers and others who acted on the Notice are not automatically informed of its removal. Where derivative records survive, separate steps under domestic data protection law may be required to remove them.
There is no formal appeal against a CCF decision. The Statute does, however, provide for revision on the basis of new information. An application for revision must be made within six months of the new information coming to light, and must demonstrate that the new information could have led to a different decision had it been available at the time of the original application.
New information typically means a development that did not exist, or was not reasonably available, at the time of the original application: a fresh court decision in another jurisdiction, a new finding by an international body, additional evidence of the requesting state’s conduct, or a change in political circumstances that confirms what could previously only be inferred.
A more detailed treatment of the revision procedure can be found in INTERPOL’s Review Proceedings.
Beyond revision, attention turns to collateral routes. INTERPOL itself remains effectively beyond direct legal challenge, but the way in which INTERPOL data is used within any particular jurisdiction can usually be challenged under that jurisdiction’s own law, through domestic data protection complaints, judicial review of how local agencies handle the data, asylum proceedings, and extradition appeals. Collateral challenges do not result in deletion from INTERPOL’s database, but they can limit the practical effect of a Notice in the jurisdiction concerned.
A CCF application is, in practical terms, a single attempt. There is no formal appeal. Revision is available only on new information of a kind that meets a specific test, and only where that information has come to light within the previous six months. An application that has been weakly drafted, or that has put information into the requesting state’s hands which the applicant would have preferred to withhold, leaves the case in a worse position than it began: the requesting state has now seen the strongest arguments and the most sensitive material, and any further challenge must be made in their shadow. The first application is, for that reason, the application that needs to be made well.
This is the principal reason that specialist advice is worth taking. The grounds for deletion interact: an effective application typically combines several, with each strengthening the others, and identifying which to plead, and in what order, is the central judgement in any case. The CCF responds to evidence rather than to assertion, and the value of an application turns on the practitioner’s familiarity with what evidence is available, what the Commission has accepted in comparable cases, and how individual requesting states tend to behave. The disclosure and confidentiality decisions, particularly in cases involving asylum or transnational repression, have direct consequences for the safety of the applicant and of those connected to them. None of this is impossible to learn from scratch, but the time taken to do so is time the application does not have.
Further background on the process can be found in How to remove a Red Notice or Diffusion, and an analysis of recent CCF decisions in Analysing INTERPOL’s Recent CCF Decisions.
If you believe a Red Notice may have been issued against you, or you wish to discuss the position in advance of one being issued, contact us. Initial discussions are confidential
As leading Interpol Red Notice lawyers, we provide accessible and in-depth information about how Interpol Red notices operate and the mechanisms available to individuals for removing notices and personal data from the Interpol database.
It is written by legal experts examining human rights and international law issues relating to Interpol. It is edited by Interpol lawyers Ben Keith and Rhys Davies, with founding editor Roger Sahota
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