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A Red Notice is a request from one INTERPOL member country to police forces worldwide, asking them to locate a named person and hold them for extradition. It is not an international arrest warrant, but it works like one: it can put a person at risk of arrest at any border, freeze their bank accounts, and cut off their ability to travel or work. IHR Advisors, founded by lawyers Ben Keith and Rhys Davies, acts to remove Red Notices and the Diffusions that do the same job through a quieter, less scrutinised channel, most often where the notice is political rather than genuine. A notice can be challenged, and a wrongly issued one can be deleted.
A Red Notice reaches into ordinary life long before any court has tested the charge behind it. A person can be arrested in a country they were only passing through, held pending an extradition hearing, and refused bail for as long as the proceedings run. Bank accounts are frozen. Visa and residence applications are refused. Employment ends when an employer runs a background check. For many people the first sign of a notice is an arrest at an airport, or a refusal at a border with no explanation given. The request alone produces all of this, whether or not the allegation has any substance.
A Red Notice is removed by challenging it inside INTERPOL’s own rules, before the Commission for the Control of INTERPOL’s Files, known as the CCF. The CCF is the independent body that reviews complaints about the data INTERPOL holds and can order a notice or Diffusion deleted.
A challenge is founded on INTERPOL’s own rules. Article 3 of its Constitution forbids it from any involvement in matters of a political, military, religious or racial character, so a notice that serves a political purpose falls outside what INTERPOL is allowed to circulate. Article 2 requires it to act in the spirit of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, so a notice tied to an unfair trial, a real risk of torture, or persecution can be challenged on that basis. The application sets out the facts of the case against these rules and asks the CCF to delete the data.
There is also a pre-emptive route. A person who fears a notice has been issued, or is about to be, can ask the CCF to confirm whether their data is held and to remove it, rather than waiting to be arrested to find out. Acting early, before a notice hardens into arrests and refusals across several countries, is usually the stronger position.
Being a real political target is not the same as proving it to INTERPOL. People often arrive certain their case is obviously political, as though the label alone settles the matter. It does not. The CCF acts on evidence of persecution, not on the fact of it: the history behind the charge, the conduct of the requesting state, the pattern of similar cases brought against others in the same position, and the absence of genuine evidence behind the allegation. The work of a Red Notice case is turning a true political case into a proven one, on the record. Precision carries it. Assertion does not.
Red Notice work is a narrow field, and a general practice does not do enough of it to know how the CCF actually decides. It turns on INTERPOL’s own rules and repository of practice, on how the Commission weighs evidence of political motivation, on the interaction between a notice, an extradition request and an asylum claim running at the same time, and on the difference between a Diffusion and a Red Notice and how each is challenged. These are not things a criminal or immigration practice picks up in passing.
The advantage here is concrete. Ben Keith and Rhys Davies have obtained the removal of politically motivated notices, act in the extradition and asylum proceedings that run alongside them, and co-founded Red Notice Monitor, where they publish analysis of INTERPOL cases and policy. They co-wrote Undue Influence: The UAE and INTERPOL, the report that set out how political interference reached INTERPOL’s own leadership. Knowing how these cases are won, and in what order the steps are taken, is what experience decides, and it is usually where the outcome is settled.
Ben Keith has spent years acting for people targeted by politically motivated Red Notices and extradition requests from states with little regard for the rule of law, taking those cases through INTERPOL’s own oversight body, the national courts and United Nations bodies, and acting in the asylum proceedings that often run alongside. 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 INTERPOL Red Notices, extradition, torture 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 Red Notice is rarely dealt with by a single application, and the firm runs the whole of it: challenging the notice or Diffusion before the CCF, defending any extradition request behind it, carrying the asylum and human rights proceedings that move alongside, managing publicity where it helps and holding it back where it would put the person at greater risk, and working with local counsel in every country where the person is at risk.
In one matter the firm acted for a high net worth individual caught up in multi-jurisdictional, high-profile litigation, where a politically motivated Red Notice was being used as a weapon by the other side. By showing that the criminal allegations behind it had been manipulated by the client’s rivals, the firm secured the removal of the notice. The people it acts for are individuals and their families, business people, politically exposed persons and human rights defenders, and the notices 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 silence.
It is a request from one INTERPOL member country to police worldwide to locate and provisionally arrest a person, pending extradition. It is not an international arrest warrant, but it can lead to arrest at a border, frozen accounts and refused visas, whether or not the charge behind it has any substance.
A notice is removed by applying to the Commission for the Control of INTERPOL’s Files, the CCF, the independent body that can order INTERPOL to delete the data. The application shows that the notice breaks INTERPOL’s own rules, most often that it serves a political purpose or is tied to an unfair process, and asks for deletion.
The Commission for the Control of INTERPOL’s Files is an independent body that reviews complaints about the information INTERPOL holds. It can decide that a Red Notice or Diffusion breaches INTERPOL’s rules and order it deleted.
Yes. Article 3 of INTERPOL’s Constitution forbids it from acting in matters of a political character, so a notice issued to punish or pressure someone for their politics falls outside its rules. The political purpose has to be proved on the evidence, not asserted, set against the conduct of the requesting state and the pattern of its other cases.
Often, yes. A request can be made to the CCF to confirm whether your data is held by INTERPOL and to seek its deletion. Acting before a notice leads to arrests across several countries is usually the stronger position, so early advice matters where a notice is feared.
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 matters most where a person is at risk of arrest or travel is already affected.
If a Red Notice has been issued against you, or you have reason to think one is coming, take advice early rather than late. These notices cross borders, they affect liberty and travel from the moment they circulate, and the choices made at the outset are the hardest to undo. 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.
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