Clare Daly Challenges Interpol on Red Notices and Assange

Thanks very much, President, and thanks very much to the Director-General. You made the point that the purpose of Red Notices is to bring criminals to justice, and I think we'd all obviously agree with that and agree with the importance of Interpol's role. But you also said that there was a sort of a misrepresentation that Interpol was surrounded in secrecy. I don't really accept that. Actually, the lack of transparency has been the subject of concern for a whole period in time now. And I welcome the fact that you've published some facts in terms of rejections. They really are very generic, very global figures. There's not much detail. Do you not think that you could move to a situation where there'd be, for example, a country-by-country breakdown of the number of requests, a breakdown on the types of crimes and so on, that that would actually give a much better understanding and be more transparent? Because you said that Red Notices shouldn't be political, but they are, and they notoriously have been the weapon of choice for states that wanted to chase political dissidents, journalists, and so on. It's kind of what Red Notices were famous for. So I'd like to hear a bit more on how those abuses don't exist anymore, because while it's been, I suppose, popular to talk about how authoritarian states might misuse these notices, we shouldn't forget that our so-called democracies can also use them. And I just wanted to use the case of Julian Assange, who was slapped with a Red Notice in 2010, who's still being persecuted to this day, locked up in a maximum security prison, while the British and US decide to drive him to death, basically. But his case is the media freedom fight of our generation, and I'd really like to know what has changed in Interpol now that would lead to a Red Notice not being issued in his case, because to my mind, he's clearly not a criminal. He's a journalist. Why did that happen, and what's changed that would happen now? And you could maybe answer the question of my colleague as well, in terms of access to redress for people whose data, information was stored, and so on as well. That would be useful. Thanks. Your floor back. Yeah, thank you very much. I mean, as I said, with all the work we have been doing since 2016 to strengthen the compliance mechanism, to ensure that every single Red Notice we are publishing is in line with our RPD, and of course, we can only take that information into consideration that is available at the time where the request is arriving. We are quite sure that we have a robust system in place now. Again, the statistics currently are telling us that 95% of all the requests we are receiving, no problem, ordinary law crime, we help in catching murderers, drug traffickers, people smugglers, rapists, sexual offenders all around the world. 5% considered non-compliant, where Interpol has to say you can do something on a bilateral level, but not with the support of Interpol. So, we have had a number of cases in the past that became public, where we found out that these have either been old cases from a time where Interpol has not had that strict compliance assurance mechanism. We have also seen that in some cases, two member countries were acting bilaterally, and it was called an Interpol operation because their Interpol national central bureaus have been involved, but actually Interpol as an organization was not involved, and the secretariat was not involved, but it appeared in the news as an Interpol operation, which was not the case. And, of course, you have to take into consideration, we are not having investigative powers anyway. We cannot make any arrests. Every member country decides on its own what to do based on a red notice that exists. They can decide to take action, but they can also decide to get more information. So, it's up to the member country to decide. That needs to be understood. And sometimes we also found out that in case we are deleting a red notice because we get information at the later stage that somebody has been receiving a protective status, we send a message to all our member countries to delete the information from our databases. We had a number of cases in the past where member countries kind of forgot deleting the information from their databases, and somebody got arrested upon arrival at an airport. So, again, something where our member countries have an important role to play to constantly update their information on their databases. And I've been explaining the multiple sources we are using to ensure compliance of data, and I think this is important and definitely a major step forward compared to maybe, I don't know, 10 years ago. So, the redress mechanism, the commission for the control of Interpol files, that is also a mechanism that we have been strengthening simply in regards to resources and experience and skills that these lawyers and other experts need to have. Again, anyone who is subject of a red notice or even in a kind of preemptive way can approach the CCF to ask, is there any information concerning my person in Interpol systems, or can ask for a deletion of this information. It's an effective remedy. So, when we have seen a number of national courts confirming that Interpol has an effective remedy in place, I hope that answers your question. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you so much, Mr. Stock. It's been certainly a very sensitive and interesting exchange of views, and certainly it has helped us to get to know better. Europol, excuse me, Interpol, its powers, its limits, and mostly related to the concern of us as to how to address the risk of abusing power. But we have covered the round of coordinators exceeding largely the timing that was allocated for this slot, more than 15 minutes now. If there's anyone else, because I'm trying always to pay respect to the members attending, anyone else willing to shoot a very short question in less than one minute, so that there will be a final round for those who are not coordinators? If it's not the case, no one else, okay, then that'll do, because we certainly exceeded our timing. It's been quite a fruitful experience. We thank Jürgen Stock, Secretary General of Interpol, and we thank all of his staff and team who have been willing to share with us some of their valuable time to get us to know better about their delivery. Thank you so much.