and Diffusions for compliance. Recognising
the importance of resourcing the review
procedure, we understand that the General
Secretariat has dedicated more lawyers,
law enforcement officials and other experts
to the NDTF to ensure that the review of
requests for INTERPOL alerts is carried
out more robustly. The number of people
involved in conducting reviews fluctuates
at around 30-40 staff. We have also been
encouraged to learn that there is now a
stricter test applied for the publication of
Red Notices online, which reduces the
risk of abusive public Red Notices
defaming individuals.
74. We have not been informed of how
the NDTF carries out its reviews. We do
not know, for example, what sources of
information the NDTF consults to check
for compliance, and what prompts the
NDTF to conduct further inquiries.
This makes it difficult to determine how
thorough and meaningful these reviews
are, and how the NDTF is able to determine
whether or not a request for a Red
Notice is compatible with Articles 2 and
3 of the Constitution. We appreciate that
the NDTF’s task of checking requests for
Red Notices is a challenging one, and that
in many cases, it will not be obvious to
INTERPOL that a request violates human
rights, or is politically motivated. The NDTF
is unlikely, for example, to have an easy
way of checking whether or not someone
has been granted refugee status. Such
information is rightly treated as confidential
and sensitive by most states.
75. There have been some cases that have
received significant media coverage which
demonstrate that INTERPOL is able to
identify politically motivated requests for
Red Notices and prevent their dissemination.
Clare Rewcastle Brown
Clare Rewcastle Brown is a British journalist whose publication Sarawak Report alleged
diversion of US$700m into the personal accounts of the Prime Minister of Malaysia.
Clare was subject to an arrest warrant in Malaysia for alleged “activity detrimental to
parliamentary democracy” and the website through which she published the Sarawak
Report was blocked within Malaysia. In a public statement, the Malaysian police
announced that it had made a request for a Red Notice against Clare on the basis
of these allegations. However, this request was rejected by INTERPOL, as confirmed
by the General Secretariat in response to a letter written by Fair Trials.56
34
56
Fair Trials, ‘INTERPOL asked to clarify position on Clare Rewcastle Brown’ (25 August 2015), Available at: www.fairtrials.org/node/807
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