We use cookies where necessary to allow us to understand how people interact with our website and content, so that we can continue to improve our service.
We only ever receive anonymous information, and cannot track you across other websites.
View our privacy policy
The Commission for the Control of INTERPOL’s Files (CCF) decides applications on the papers. In practice it holds no hearings. Witnesses are not examined or cross-examined, and their evidence reaches the Commission only as written statements. Chapter 7 of INTERPOL Law and Practice sets out how to choose that evidence when challenging a Red Notice or Diffusion.
Evidence follows strategy. The applicant must first decide which rule of INTERPOL’s legal framework the requesting state has breached. Usually that is Article 3 of INTERPOL’s Constitution (political character), Article 2 (human rights), Article 82 of the Rules on the Processing of Data (RPD) (no continuing purpose) or Article 83 (no proper basis for the data). Every document in the bundle should serve one of those arguments.
A witness statement counts when the Commission can see who made it, how they know the facts and that they stand by them. The applicant’s own statement is usually the most persuasive. It should explain what happened and why they fear the requesting state.
Any statement should identify its maker and exhibit an identity document. It should explain the source of the witness’s knowledge, stay within the CCF’s mandate and end with a statement of truth. Where the witness lives in a jurisdiction that requires notarisation or a similar formality, observe it.
Some of the strongest evidence shows that relatives or business associates were detained or pressured after the request was made. If disclosing a statement to the requesting National Central Bureau (NCB) would put the witness at risk, the submission should say so expressly and ask the CCF not to share it.
Open-source material carries weight in proportion to the independence of its author. INTERPOL’s 2024 amendment to Article 47 of the RPD regulates the processing of publicly available information, and reflects an acceptance that people fleeing persecution can rarely obtain documents from the state pursuing them.
Reports from UN Special Procedures, the UN Committee against Torture, the US State Department, the FCDO, Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, Transparency International and the Venice Commission count because they come from independent bodies. Press articles and social media posts carry little weight without corroboration. Grants of asylum to co-defendants, and sanctions designations against those behind the prosecution, belong in this part of the bundle too.
Judgments and orders help; transcripts rarely do. A short set of orders showing that the applicant has taken part in the proceedings, instructed lawyers and given an address for service answers the familiar allegation that they have fled justice.
Court records can also show when a civil dispute became criminal. A criminal complaint on the same facts, filed soon after an unfavourable civil judgment, is a recognised sign of misuse. A finding by a civil court or arbitral tribunal that a party fabricated evidence, or used criminal complaints as leverage, is worth more than any volume of pleadings.
Experts explain context the Commission cannot be expected to know. A report might describe how corporate raiding works in a particular post-Soviet state, or how local-partner ownership rules in the Gulf and parts of Africa produce criminal complaints when a joint venture fails. It might explain why a journalist or a member of a persecuted minority faces a specific risk.
Experts should provide a CV, a statement of truth and a declaration of independence, and footnote their sources so the Commission can check them. The Commission will read a focused report of ten to twenty pages with hyperlinked sources. It is unlikely to read much more.
Relevance counts for more than volume. If one bank statement shows that a payment was made in the course of a commercial dispute, that statement is enough, and a folder of unrelated receipts adds nothing. Index annexes by date or subject and paginate them. Highlight the relevant passages of long reports rather than exhibiting them whole. Anything not in one of INTERPOL’s four working languages (Arabic, English, French and Spanish) needs a translation.
The CCF summarises the applicant’s arguments and puts specific questions to the requesting NCB. NCBs often reply with assertions of guilt and avoid the political dimension. Where they do not reply at all, the Commission tends to find for the applicant. It may also ask the applicant for updates, particularly on detention or extradition proceedings, so the file needs to be kept current.
Evidence can also reopen a closed case. The CCF has reversed earlier refusals where co-defendants were later granted asylum, or where new material on rendition or persecution emerged. The threshold is high. The new fact must go to the heart of the original decision; evidence that merely confirms a secondary point will not do.
We prepare CCF applications for people facing Red Notices and Diffusions, from gathering witness and expert evidence to answering the NCB’s response, and draw on our international law practice where a case turns on asylum or wider human rights questions.
This article draws on Chapter 7 of INTERPOL Law and Practice by Ben Keith and Rhys Davies, published by Thomson Reuters. Order from Sweet & Maxwell.
The Commission never meets the applicant. The bundle is the only chance to be heard, and it should read as an argument rather than an archive.
If you are preparing a challenge to a Red Notice or Diffusion, contact us in confidence.
Red Notice Monitor launches Back to Basics series to ensure our readers understand the essential elements of Interpol and Red Notices before dealing with the complexities.
Continuing our Back to Basics series, we turn to perhaps the most frequently misunderstood element of international policing: the Red Notice itself.
