CRIME: An Introduction to UK-wide

Developments in International Police Co-operation

The International Criminal Police Organization, INTERPOL, celebrated its 100th anniversary in January 2023. Having begun with just 20 national representatives, INTERPOL now facilitates communication between 195 member countries to enable the apprehension and extradition of fugitives. Nonetheless, the recent controversies surrounding its processes, including the opacity with which it operates, persist. Most significantly, INTERPOL continues to be vulnerable to political abuse and the misuse of its processes by oppressive regimes in pursuit of refugees, journalists and political dissidents.

Criticism of the use of Red Notices as a political weapon by Russia and China remains widespread. Similarly, on 5 June 2023, INTERPOL received an open letter from a group of prominent human rights activists, lawyers and politicians, highlighting concerns surrounding Turkey’s misuse of INTERPOL’s Stolen and Lost Travel Document system in order to circumvent restrictions imposed on its access to the Red Notice database, and calling for Turkey’s access to INTERPOL databases to be suspended. Whilst INTERPOL published a response, claiming that such misuse is prevented by INTERPOL’s adherence to its rules and procedures, many stakeholders argue that the organisation still needs to do more to curb the abuse of its systems for political purposes.

INTERPOL’s protestations regarding its neutrality and the robustness of its procedures would perhaps be better received if not for its strong links to certain controversial actors. As we highlighted in last year’s overview, concerns about INTERPOL’s current President, Mr Al-Raisi, remain. Those concerns were compounded at the end of 2022 following the filing of complaints against Al-Raisi in the UAE regarding allegations of kidnap and torture, leading to French anti-terror prosecutors opening an investigation.

Further, in the middle of 2023, with the murder of Jamal Khashoggi still fresh on many minds, Saudi Arabia donated USD1.12 million towards INTERPOL’s Capabilities for Operational Relevance programme, which aims to use digital advances to help with security checks at border crossings around the world.

INTERPOL’s financing structure is partly based on donations, with only a third of its resources coming from statutory contribution programmes. In an attempt to increase transparency, INTERPOL has recently published data concerning the funding of its Red Notices and Diffusions Task Force. However, some commentators claim that INTERPOL’s continued reliance on donations (as opposed to dues paid by member states) may increase the organisation’s dependence on regimes seeking to abuse it for their own ends.

In a rare response to some of the criticism levied against it, on 4 July 2023, INTERPOL published a press release stating that “no requests for a Red Notice or Wanted Persons Diffusion have been received” from Hong Kong in relation to eight pro-democracy activists, highlighting in the statement that “INTERPOL’s Notices and Diffusions Task Force specifically assesses the status of the individual concerned, such as whether the individual is a refugee or political activist, in order to determine compliance”.

Further, the Russian government still cannot send Diffusion Notices prior to a review by INTERPOL’s General Secretariat, amidst wider calls by the international community to suspend Russia from INTERPOL entirely. In apparent retaliation, Russian lawmakers called INTERPOL’s actions “unfriendly” and raised concerns over espionage through INTERPOL’s access to Russian databases. On 17 August 2023, Russia’s Ministry of Internal Affairs published an order limiting INTERPOL’s activity in Russia which will only be allowed to take place with the approval of the Ministry of Internal Affairs.

Developments Domestically 

In last year’s overview, we highlighted the extradition cases of Michael Lynch and Julian Assange. On 21 April 2023, Mr Lynch was refused permission to appeal his extradition to the USA. It was reported at the time that Mr Lynch was considering making application to the European Court of Human Rights for interim measures (a “Rule 39” application) to prevent his extradition, but ultimately it appears that this application was either not made or, if it was made, was unsuccessful. Mr Lynch was extradited to the USA on 11 May 2023 to face trial, and was subsequently ordered to pay a USD100 million bond, hand over his passport and be placed under 24-hour guard in order to secure his release on bail.

In relation to Mr Assange, on 6 June 2023, the High Court denied Mr Assange’s application for permission to appeal against the extradition order signed by the Home Secretary, Priti Patel, on 17 June 2022. Mr Assange’s wife indicated at the time that a renewed appeal would be submitted to the High Court, and further reports indicate that the appeal to the High Court was submitted on 13 June 2023. In the meantime, reports indicate that an application to the European Court of Human Rights, which may affect the extradition process, was submitted on Mr Assange’s behalf in December 2022.

On any view, however, Mr Assange’s legal routes to prevent extradition are nearly exhausted, and political pressure may be his last and only chance. Australian politicians have raised the issue of Mr Assange’s detention with US officials in late 2022, while a request to the US Attorney General to drop the attempts to extradite Mr Assange was submitted in April 2023, with no success. It remains to be seen whether Mr Assange can successfully use campaigns by human rights activists, such as Amnesty International, to leverage his position.

In further UK-US developments, on 20 October 2022, Anne Sacoolas, a US citizen, belatedly decided to submit to UK justice and pleaded guilty in the UK to causing death by careless driving via video link from the US. As is well-known, Ms Sacoolas was involved in the fatal incident outside a US military base in Northamptonshire leading to the death of Harry Dunn in August 2019. She left the UK days after the incident, with the US government asserting diplomatic immunity on her behalf. An extradition request to bring Ms Sacoolas to the UK was rejected by the US government, when President Trump was in office. President Biden’s administration later confirmed that the decision refusing extradition was final. The UK Foreign Office asserted at the time that this “amounts to a denial of justice”. In another high-profile extradition case, the Indian diamond magnate, Nirav Modi, lost his final appeal against extradition on 15 December 2022. While the normal procedure dictates that the UK Home Secretary had 28 days to remove him, that process has not yet taken place due, reportedly as a result of the presence of another legal matter barring his removal, speculated to be an asylum application.

Finally, and perhaps with a touch of schadenfreude, on 10 March 2023, the Higher Regional Court of Karlsruhe in Germany refused extradition to the UK of an Albanian individual, who had lived in the UK and was accused of trafficking narcotics and money laundering. The decision was based on the lack of guarantees for the protection of the requested person’s Article 3 ECHR rights, specifically with regard to the UK’s prison conditions and its chronic overcrowding, staff shortages and violence.