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Ben Keith, co-founder of IHR Advisors, answered practitioners’ questions at a seminar on extradition, INTERPOL and Ukraine on Friday 30 October, hosted by EQUITY law firm. The questions were practical ones: silence from the Commission for the Control of INTERPOL’s Files (CCF), pre-emptive requests, interim measures, Diffusions and Article 3 of INTERPOL’s Constitution. His answers are below, edited for length and clarity.
The CCF now handles applications through an online portal. It replies when it has something to say and not before, which can mean months of silence. Chasing is possible, but it rarely gets a response. The CCF now waits for the requesting country to answer, and some states never do. In earlier Ukrainian cases, INTERPOL treated six or nine months without a reply as acceptance of the applicant’s submissions. It kept the right to reconsider if the state came back later, and Ben has seen the same approach with China recently.
Sending more evidence is usually counterproductive. Update the file if the case really changes. Otherwise, in his words: ‘If you can make that argument in 10 pages, then they will remove it.’
A pre-emptive request asks INTERPOL not to publish a Red Notice before any country has asked for one. Nothing in INTERPOL’s Rules on the Processing of Data (RPD) provides for it, and INTERPOL is still deciding whether to accept such requests at all. Until a state applies, the request sits on the file unread.
Results vary. In one of Ben’s cases, no notice was issued, and the CCF’s letter saying it had taken ‘appropriate measures’ confirmed that. In another, the state applied two and a half to three years after the pre-emptive request. The notice was issued without any ruling on the request, and the defence was invited to make further submissions. Human rights arguments on their own rarely stop a notice. The exceptions are a real risk of the death penalty or serious harm, or a client who is a journalist or human rights defender. He still files pre-emptive requests.
Hardly ever, and almost never in time to help. A planned trip is never urgent. Urgency means detention with a real risk of removal to a state such as China, Bahrain or Saudi Arabia, where the death penalty or torture is in prospect. The more realistic outcome is blocking once the CCF reads the file. In a recent Russian case against a Ukrainian client, the CCF blocked the data about two months before the hearing, kept it blocked when the hearing slipped, and then deleted it as politically motivated.
Trusted local counsel. Once the client is arrested, the notice has done its job. Deal with bail and the extradition request first, and come back to INTERPOL a few weeks later.
You find a Diffusion the same way as a Red Notice. Ask INTERPOL, or assume one exists if your client faces a domestic prosecution. Otherwise people find out at the border. The challenge procedure is the same. Since about early 2025, writing to the CCF about a Diffusion, especially an older Turkish one, has often led the General Secretariat to review it and remove it as non-compliant. That ends the matter without a full CCF decision. You get a letter, not a reasoned judgment, but it works.
Treat it like a Refugee Convention claim, not Article 18 of the European Convention on Human Rights, whose test Ben calls ‘ludicrously high’. Imputed political opinion applies, so a client does not have to be a politician. Being seen as close to a political figure is enough, and so is holding information a government wants. Explain who is driving the case, what they want from the client, why the charges are fabricated, and what follows: ill-treatment, pressure, or an unfair trial. Local detail needs context. Evidence of manipulated judge allocation at Ukraine’s High Anti-Corruption Court will mean little to the CCF unless it is presented as political interference in the justice system.
A reasoned deletion helps, but the timing rarely matches. A reasoned extradition discharge is among the strongest evidence you can put before the CCF, but it does not lead to deletion automatically. Several CCF decisions have held that blanket protection for Ukrainian nationals in Austria and Italy was not enough. Discharges on technical grounds, such as papers that never arrived, help without being decisive.
Not usually. The CCF is now the single point of contact and passes matters to the General Secretariat itself. The exception is when you are making a public point about a pattern of abuse.
A revision request, but only with significant new evidence. Examples are co-defendants granted asylum elsewhere, or findings by Amnesty International or Human Rights Watch. The CCF now limits the reopening request to two pages.
The problem is expertise more than partisanship. The CCF and domestic courts give most weight to experts with in-country knowledge. Thematic UN Special Rapporteurs, for example on torture or human rights defenders, and members of the European Committee for the Prevention of Torture (CPT) who have inspected places of detention, can be very useful.
‘It always helps.’
We act for people facing Red Notices, Diffusions and extradition requests, including from Ukraine and Russia. We make pre-emptive requests, applications to the CCF and requests for revision, and we work with local counsel when a client is arrested abroad. Our INTERPOL practice sits alongside our international law work on asylum and the European Convention on Human Rights.
Our thanks to EQUITY and Dr Ganna Yudkivska for organising.
If you think you may be the subject of an INTERPOL notice, contact us in confidence.
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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