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INTERPOL facilitates many of the arrests, travel bans, and extradition requests that follow people across borders. However very little of how it works is visible to the person affected by it and most of the public are not aware of what it is and how it functions. This page sets out what Interpol is, what a Red Notice and Diffusion do to the people named in them, and what can be done about them.
The International Criminal Police Organisation, INTERPOL, maintains a database through which its member countries share information about people wanted for criminal prosecution or to serve an existing sentence. That information travels internationally through two main mechanisms: Red Notices and Diffusions. Both allow police forces around the world to identify and potentially detain a person who crosses an international border.
INTERPOL is not a global police force. It has no investigators of its own and no power to arrest anyone. It is better understood as a communication network, and its purpose is to let national law enforcement agencies work together across jurisdictions they could not otherwise reach.
A Red Notice is an alert circulated through INTERPOL’s database to every member country, telling them that a named individual is wanted for prosecution or to serve a sentence. It carries identifying material, including name, date of birth, nationality, and photograph, together with an account of the alleged offences.
A Red Notice is not an international arrest warrant. It is a request from one member country asking the others to locate, arrest, and ultimately extradite a particular person. Countries respond to that request very differently: some treat a Red Notice as grounds for immediate arrest while others treat it as an alert and nothing more.
The practical effect is much the same in either case. A Red Notice usually produces either detention or serious restrictions on international travel, and often both, with extradition proceedings following. The scale is considerable: INTERPOL issued 15,548 Red Notices in 2024, the highest annual total recorded at that point, and more than 80,000 valid Red Notices sit in its files.
A diffusion is a request for cooperation sent by one member country’s national central bureau directly to other member countries rather than through INTERPOL’s general secretariat. It can go to a handful of countries or to the entire membership.
The process is less formal than a Red Notice and it is not reviewed centrally before it circulates. The consequences are close to identical. Diffusions trigger the same border stops, the same police responses, and the same restrictions on movement, which makes them quieter and more flexible instruments doing the same work.
Once a Red Notice is issued an electronic alert goes automatically to every INTERPOL member country and each of those countries passes it down to their own police forces. What happens next depends almost entirely on where you are. In some jurisdictions you face arrest on the spot and extradition proceedings afterwards. In others the response is much lighter.
Travel is where the risk concentrates. Border control and immigration authorities in most countries are instructed to detain anyone flagged by a Red Notice or a Diffusion at the point of crossing. However, individuals are at risk elsewhere. Many countries require hotels to pass guests’ details to local police, who run those details against INTERPOL data. An arrest can happen anywhere.
A Red Notice does not have to be enforced to do its damage. For most of the people we advise, the fear of arrest has already disrupted their life long before issues at border control arise.
INTERPOL publishes a searchable list of wanted persons on its website. Unfortunately, that list is often close to useless as a way of checking your own position. In 2022 around 7,500 of the 69,270 valid red notices were publicly visible, a little over a tenth of them. Diffusions do not appear on the site at all.
There are two routes worth trying. An information request to police authorities in your country of residence. Few of them have a formal procedure for this though the human rights organisation Fair Trials reports that some individuals have obtained an answer that way.
The second is a request to the Commission for the Control of INTERPOL’s files, the body responsible for compliance with INTERPOL’s data processing rules. The request has to meet specific admissibility requirements and even then, disclosure is not guaranteed. The CCF will normally only confirm what is held if the country that requested the Red Notice or Diffusion has agreed to disclosure.
You can ask INTERPOL to review and delete a Red Notice by applying in writing to the Commission for the Control of INTERPOL’s files. The process is opaque and slow. Challenges usually take months and you may spend that time incarcerated or at the very least unable to travel.
The CCF has created a portal where individuals can make applications for their files to be reviewed and deleted. Is no appeal. The CCF’s decision is final and if a deletion request is refused, the only route left is a fresh application built on a material change in your circumstances. That makes the quality of the first application decisive, which is why the drafting matters more here than in almost any other written process.
Each of INTERPOL’s 196 member countries runs a National Central Bureau. These bureaus work differently from country to country, but each connects domestic law enforcement to the wider INTERPOL network and to the General Secretariat in Lyon, France. Governance runs through the General Assembly, which brings together representatives of every member country and votes on the basis of one country, one vote. The Assembly elects the President for a four-year term. Lucas Philippe of France was elected at the 93rd General Assembly in Morocco in November 2025 and serves until 2029. Executive committee members serve three-year terms and the Secretary General, currently Valdece Urquiza of Brazil, runs the organisation day to day.
INTERPOL operates under a written constitution and is funded by mandatory contributions from member countries, topped up by voluntary donations.
The Commission for the Control of INTERPOL’s Files is INTERPOL’s independent oversight body. It reviews requests for the deletion of Red Notices and Diffusions, and it polices INTERPOL’s compliance with its own constitution and data protection standards.
The Commission has the power to hold oral hearings, but has chosen not to use it, handling every case on written submissions. It is the final interpreter of what the constitution and rules mean in practice. The CCF has seven members elected by the General Assembly. Members serve five years, renewable once for a further three.
The decision rests with the CCF. The current Commission took office on 11 March 2022. This marked a real change in composition. Where earlier Commissions were drawn largely from police and security backgrounds, this one is made up entirely of specialists in data processing or human rights, five of the seven being lawyers.
It sits in two chambers, with the Chairperson sitting in both.
Supervisory and Advisory Chamber
Requests Chamber
We act for people who have been made the subject of a Red Notice or a diffusion, often by states using INTERPOL to reach political opponents, journalists and business figures who have left. Our INTERPOL practice covers access requests, pre-emptive submissions made before a notice is requested, applications to the CCF for deletion, and the extradition and immigration proceedings that tend to follow. Co-founders Ben Keith and Rhys Davies have run these applications for clients across the post-Soviet states, the Gulf, Africa and the Far East.
If you think you may be subject to a Red Notice or a diffusion, or you have discovered one already, contact us for a confidential discussion.