Interpol is such a cool idea: Cosmopolitan cops chasing criminals around the world.
That's the image that's been projected in movies like "Interpol" (1957), "The Medallion" (2003), "The International" (2009), "Now You See Me," (2013), "Darc" (2018), and "Red Notice" (2021).
The reality, I'm sorry to tell you, is rather different.
The roots of the International Criminal Police Organization, as it's officially known, go back nearly 102 years. It currently has 196 member countries. But it's not an international FBI. It doesn't have agents who carry weapons, investigate crimes, or make arrests. It doesn't enforce international laws.
All it does is share intelligence, run databases, coordinate among police forces, and support investigations across borders.
And it issues alerts, in particular "Red Notices," essentially an international arrest warrant. I'll have more to say about that in a moment.
Keen observers have long sounded alarms about the disfunctions accumulating within Interpol. In 2019, in the Journal of Democracy, scholar Edward Lemon reported that the organization "lacks accountability for its actions" and that "more needs to be done to prevent the hijacking, repurposing, and weaponizing of Interpol by today's globalized authoritarian regimes."
But more has not been done.
A root cause of Interpol's problems is that it operates according to the principle of "sovereign equality" – the lovely but false assumption that all members subscribe to a common standard of justice and judicial integrity.
That has allowed authoritarian states and criminal regimes to use Interpol to suppress and/or punish political opponents, dissidents, and critics abroad. The technical term is "transnational repression."
Interpol accomplishes this by issuing the aforementioned "Red Notices" – formal requests to locate and detain a suspect pending extradition or other legal actions. Such requests are frequently based on charges that Interpol officials are reluctant to recognize as bogus.
"The targets of Red Notices," Mr. Lemon noted, "are often unable to travel freely, normalize their immigration status, open bank accounts, rent property, and find work."
I'll offer just a few examples. In 1997, at Beijing's request, Interpol issued a Red Notice against Dolkun Isa, president of the World Uyghur Congress, designating him a "wanted terrorist."
Thereafter he faced detention in, or refusal of entry to, South Korea, India, Turkey, Italy, Japan and other countries. The UN also denied him entry on its premises. The notice remained active until 2018 when Interpol finally removed it.
At Moscow insistence, Interpol issued multiple Red Notices for Bill Browder, the American-born financier who campaigned successfully for the 2012 Magnitsky Act imposing sanctions on Russian officials responsible for serious human right violations – such as the killing of his attorney, Sergei Magnitsky.
Mr. Browder was staying at a luxury hotel in Spain in 2018 when there came a knock on his door. Minutes later, in compliance with a Red Notice originating from the Kremlin, he was in a Spanish jail fearing he would soon be shoved into a "Russian jet" that would deliver him to the clutches of Vladimir Putin who would torture and kill him.
He believes what saved him was tweeting his predicament to his 100,000 followers. Before long, the chief of police paid him a visit. "We've just gotten off the phone with Interpol general secretariat in Lyon," he said. "The warrant is no longer valid. You're free to go."
A recommendation: Mr. Browder's 2015 book, "Red Notice: A True Story of High Finance, Murder, and One Man's Fight for Justice." A riveting and edifying read.
Turkey is another abuser of the system. Mr. Lemon writes that "after the alleged coup attempt in Turkey in July 2016, the government of Recep Tayyip Erdoğan unsuccessfully tried to compel Interpol to issue sixty-thousand Red Notices against its enemies living abroad."
Among those who have accused the Islamic Republic of Iran of weaponizing Interpol to target political opponents in exile: the Council of Europe and the European Parliament.
Of course, Tehran, like Moscow, sometimes take a more direct route: dispatching assassins to silence those who tell the truth about their regimes.
Serious efforts to reform Interpol should have been put in place long ago. But for reasons I haven't space to explore here, the leaders of free nations almost never hold international organizations to account.
In 2023, according to an essay in Politico, the Biden administration published "a report that found – in defiance of the evidence published by Interpol itself – that there has been no Interpol abuse since 2019."
President Trump might want to take a more realistic and muscular approach.
He could consider issuing an executive order suspending American funds – roughly 17 percent of Interpol's core operating budget, more than any other nation provides.
He could mandate a comprehensive review of U.S. engagement with Interpol to be conducted by members of his national security cabinet and the intelligence community.
The review would evaluate how well Interpol's operations align with American interests and values and insist that specific reforms be enacted before any additional Americans checks are in the mail. Legislative or diplomatic actions also might be considered.
Interpol is hardly the only international organization urgently in need of reform.
Most blatantly and obviously, the U.N. continues to receive billions of American taxpayer dollars year after year while catering to tyrants and terrorists.
It would not be difficult to come up with a few suggestions for how President Trump might want to begin repairing this sorely dilapidated institution.