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A politically motivated prosecution is a prosecution brought for political purposes. It is a criminal case brought to punish or control someone for who they are, what they believe or what they have said, rather than for anything they have actually done. IHR Advisors, founded by lawyers Ben Keith and Rhys Davies, defends people facing prosecutions of this kind around the world, where the state directing the case also controls the court that will hear it.
They often look like an ordinary case. There is a charge, a file, a prosecutor and a courtroom, and on the surface everything is in order. The hallmarks of a politically motivated prosecution are obvious when you look: a high profile individual with political connections or business interests running against the state, charges that are complex and difficult to unravel, making them hard to disprove, or so broad as to be meaningless, a process that denies the basics of a fair hearing, and a target who happens to be a critic, a journalist, an opponent or a commercial rival of someone with power.
The harm is not only the prosecution itself. It is designed to destroy reputations. A charge alone can freeze a person’s assets, end their employment, strip their reputation and, when it travels through an INTERPOL Red Notice or an extradition request, follow them into other countries. A conviction in absentia, entered while the person is abroad and unable to defend themselves, can then be used to demand their return. The prosecution does its damage long before any honest court would have reached a finding.
Defending a politically motivated prosecution means working on two levels at once. The first is the case as charged, met with the ordinary tools of criminal defence: testing the evidence, holding the prosecution to its burden, and insisting on the fair trial rights that international law guarantees, the right to know the case, to challenge it, to an independent tribunal and to a hearing free of predetermined outcome.
The second level is the motivation behind the charge, and this is where these cases are usually won or lost. Showing that a prosecution is political is not done by challenging the evidence. It is built from the record: the history of how the case arose, the conduct and interests of those driving it, the pattern of similar cases against others like the client, and the gap where genuine evidence should be. Tied together, that record reframes the whole matter, and it is what allows a court abroad, an extradition judge, or an international body to see the prosecution for what it is.
These prosecutions rarely stay in one country. A politically driven case at home becomes an INTERPOL Red Notice circulated worldwide, an extradition request to wherever the person has fled, and sometimes a public campaign to pressure them into return. Defending the criminal case therefore reaches well beyond the original courtroom: challenging the notice inside INTERPOL’s rules, resisting surrender in the national courts, and putting the abuse before the international human rights mechanisms where that supports the defence.
International criminal defence combines ordinary advocacy with bodies of law most practitioners never reach: the fair trial standards of international human rights law, the bars to extradition, the rules of INTERPOL’s oversight body, and the way a prosecution in one country drives proceedings in several others. A defence that handles only the charge in front of it misses where the real fight is.
It also runs under pressure, often against a state with deep resources and a fixed intention. Knowing which front to take first, and how a step in one affects the others, is the part experience decides. It is also where the outcome tends to be settled.
Ben Keith has spent years defending people prosecuted by states with little regard for the rule of law, taking those cases through the national courts, INTERPOL’s own oversight body and United Nations bodies, and acting in the extradition and asylum proceedings that run alongside a political prosecution. He is a lawyer at 5SAH in London, ranked for extradition and international work in both Chambers and Partners and the Legal 500, the former describing him as “out of this world”.
In 2021 he co-wrote Undue Influence: The UAE and INTERPOL with Rhys Davies and Sir David Calvert-Smith, setting out how political interference reached an international institution’s own leadership, and the report fed directly into the case for reform. He has appeared on CBS 60 Minutes, written for the Financial Times, given evidence to the UK Parliament’s Joint Committee on Human Rights, and co-founded Red Notice Monitor, where he edits and publishes legal analysis of INTERPOL cases and policy.
Rhys Davies has built the same kind of practice from a different chair: cases involving torture, extradition and politically motivated prosecution across several jurisdictions, and communications to the United Nations where a case calls for them. He is a lawyer at Temple Garden Chambers in London and The Hague, ranked as a leading individual by the Legal 500 2026, which calls him “a standout international lawyer” and the lawyer others turn to for UN submissions in difficult cases.
He has written on international law for The Economist, Newsweek, City A.M., the Guardian, The Times and the Independent, appears regularly on Al Jazeera, and has featured on CBS 60 Minutes and the Sky News Dirty Work podcast. He co-founded and edits Red Notice Monitor, and in 2025 he gave evidence, alongside Ben Keith, to the Joint Committee on Human Rights.
Ben Keith and Rhys Davies founded IHR Advisors to keep the legal work, the strategy and the press handling of these cases in one place, because in practice they cannot be pulled apart. A politically motivated prosecution is rarely defeated on the charge alone, and the firm runs the whole of it: meeting the criminal case as charged, challenging the INTERPOL Red Notice or extradition request it generates, putting the abuse before the international human rights mechanisms where that helps, managing publicity where it serves the client and holding it back where it would not, and working with local counsel in every country the case reaches.
The people the firm acts for are individuals and their families, business people, politically exposed persons and human rights defenders. The prosecutions come most often from states with a settled habit of transnational repression, the reaching of a government beyond its own borders to pursue the people it wants to punish, and the same states that misuse INTERPOL and extradition are usually the ones bringing the charge in the first place.
It is a criminal case brought to punish or control a person for their politics, beliefs, identity or commercial position rather than for genuine wrongdoing. The charge may look ordinary, but it is driven by purpose rather than evidence, often against a critic, journalist, opponent or rival.
Not by asserting it, but by building a record: how the case arose, the conduct and interests of those driving it, the pattern of similar cases against others, and the absence of real evidence. Tied to the specific rights breached, that record lets a court or an international body see the prosecution for what it is.
They are the protections international law guarantees to anyone facing a criminal charge: the right to know the case against you, to challenge it, to an independent and impartial tribunal, and to a hearing that is not decided in advance. Their absence is often the clearest sign that a prosecution is political.
Often, yes. A conviction entered in absence or after an unfair trial can be challenged where it is used to support an extradition request or an INTERPOL Red Notice, and the unfairness of the original process becomes part of that challenge.
Contact IHR Advisors through the contact page on this site. Ben and Rhys take instructions from individuals, family members, organisations and legal teams working in parallel, and early advice shapes what is open to you later.
If you are facing a prosecution you believe is driven by politics rather than evidence, take advice early. These cases run across borders and on several fronts at once, and the choices made at the start fix the limits of everything that follows. A lawyer who works in this field can usually tell you, inside a single conversation, where you stand and what can be done about it.
If you would like to speak with us about our areas of practice or anything else please contact us via the form linked below.
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