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On Sunday, the delegates of the General Assembly of Interpol – the International Criminal Police Organization – the law enforcement coordinating body of 192 countries – met at Dubai for their 87th annual session. The most important agenda item will come on the last day: Wednesday, delegates will elect the new president of the organization in replacement of Meng Hongwei, who disappeared in China in October. (The Chinese authorities subsequently announced that Meng had been arrested for "bribery charge" and sent what would be supposed to be his resignation letter to the agency's headquarters in Lyon, France.)
The main presidential candidate of Interpol is Alexander Prokopchuk, a police general of the Russian Interior Ministry who for seven years heads the Russian office of Interpol. Prokopchuk's candidacy was kept secret until the last moment – and presumably until the Kremlin was confident of getting enough votes. The British government has determined that Prokopchuk's victory is assured to the extent that "there is no point trying to stop him". A British human rights group, Fair Trials, has written to the Interpol secretariat to strongly protest against this candidacy and to stress that "this would not be suitable for a country that has already committed violations of the rules of Interpol (for example by frequently seeking to use its systems to disseminate its information) (political alerts) to be given a leadership role in a key monitoring institution. "
"Political alerts" are one of the Kremlin's favorite tactics. They were used to legitimize the prosecution of political opponents and make their lives more difficult by limiting their movements. Despite the explicit prohibition in the Interpol constitution of any intervention or activity of a political, military, religious or racial nature, the organization gladly accepted Moscow's requests to issue "Red Notices" – in fact international arrest warrants – against important opponents of the Kremlin.
Among those targeted were Vladimir Gusinsky, former owner of the leading independent media group in Russia; Leonid Nevzlin, vice president of Yukos Oil, indicted as part of the Kremlin campaign against the company; Eerik-Niiles Kross, an Estonian politician who has long been a thorn in the foot of the Kremlin; Boris Berezovsky, the most influential former "oligarch" of Russia, who helped bring Vladimir Putin to power and later became his sworn opponent; Akhmed Zakayev, Chechen Prime Minister in exile; and Nikita Kulachenkov, an activist of Alexei Navalny's Anti-Corruption Foundation. It took a lot of time and effort to convince Interpol to withdraw the arrest warrants because of their political motivation.
Among the most recent targets of Kremlin-inspired "Red Notices" was Bill Browder, an American financier who spearheaded the international campaign for targeted sanctions against corrupt officials and perpetrators of human rights abuses. the man in the Russian government. Sentenced in absentia to a prison term in Russia, Browder had recently been arrested in Spain on Interpol 's mandate in May this year. (He was quickly released.) He is in the impossibility of visiting several countries because of the current legal risks.
With a police general named by Putin, the Kremlin would no longer need to abuse Interpol to pursue its goals. he would be able to put the organization at his service. The list of people wanted by the Russian Interior Ministry, including Mikhail Khodorkovsky, his longtime opponent of the Kremlin, and the Tatar leader of Crimea and Ukrainian legislator Mustafa Dzhemilev, guess what names could be retained for future "red ads". "(Disclaimer: Khodorkovsky is the founder of the Open Russia movement, of which I am the vice president.) The Americans who contributed to the adoption of the Magnitsky law – and whose interrogation was requested by the President Trump in Helsinki – are also candidates.
But if President Prokopchouk acceded to Interpol's presidency, the misuse of the "red notice" system would be the least of the problems. The main purpose of the organization is the exchange of information and mutual assistance between the national police forces. One can imagine what the Kremlin could do with access to sensitive databases around the world. On the one hand, there could be many more discreet Russian tourists traveling to foreign countries with new passports to admire the ancient Gothic cathedrals.
Unlike other international organizations, Interpol does not list its former presidents on its official website. There are good reasons for that. Between 1940 and 1945, the organization – then known as the International Criminal Police Commission – was led successively by three Nazi war criminals: SS General Reinhard Heydrich, the chief architect of the United States. ;Holocaust; SS General Arthur Nebe, who, at the head of the Einsatzgruppe B, is responsible for the killing of tens of thousands of Jews in Poland and Belarus; and SS General Ernst Kaltenbrunner, founder of the Mauthausen concentration camp and one of the main instigators of the Holocaust, who was hanged in Nuremberg for crimes against humanity. This is a page in its history that the International Criminal Police Organization would prefer to forget. Putin's regime is not a Third Reich – but his actions in the country and abroad are a travesty of the very concept of the rule of law. One day, Interpol will probably also want to forget the page that it will open on Wednesday.
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Kara-Murza is a historian, filmmaker and activist of Russian democracy. He is vice-president of the Open Russia movement and president of the Boris Nemtsov Foundation for Freedom.
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