INTERPOL Neutrality in Full Swing

According to the Report of the Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Russian Federation, Mariana Katzarova (A/HRC/60/59), presented to the United Nations Human Rights Council (8 September–3 October 2025):

"At least 65 exiled journalists faced criminal cases. Their assets in the Russian Federation and bank accounts have been seized by the Russian authorities. Their names are on various wanted lists, including International Criminal Police Organization (INTERPOL) Red Notices, effectively putting them at risk of arrest and refoulement if they travel to countries where extradition with the Russian Federation is possible."

(Paragraph 33, p. 54.)

The report is available here:

https://www.ohchr.org/sites/default/files/documents/hrbodies/hrcouncil/sessions-regular/session60/advance-version/a-hrc-60-59-aev.pdf

https://video.wixstatic.com/video/7f6093_86da748f0d4f4a26ba209a24a6041e20/1080p/mp4/file.mp4

Under Russian domestic law, these journalists may indeed have been subjected to criminal proceedings or formally charged. However, from the perspective of international human rights law—and the rights guaranteed under the Universal Declaration of Human Rights—the mere existence of domestic criminal charges cannot, by itself, justify international police cooperation against individuals allegedly persecuted for exercising their fundamental freedoms.

This raises an obvious question: if a UN Special Rapporteur publicly identifies exiled journalists as targets of politically motivated repression while noting that they are also the subjects of INTERPOL Red Notices, where is the neutrality that INTERPOL so frequently proclaims? And where was the meaningful scrutiny that INTERPOL claims to apply before facilitating such international alerts?

What INTERPOL has been doing under the guise of its ostensible neutrality—maintaining the outward appearance of impartiality while, in reality, exhibiting institutional indifference and negligence—reflects a recurring lesson from history: legality alone is never a substitute for justice.

Idi Amin, one of Africa's most brutal dictators, once boasted that his country was among the most law-abiding in the world. Yet those "laws" permitted executions and persecution for conduct that no civilized legal system could regard as legitimate. Likewise, under the laws of Nazi Germany, the persecution and eventual annihilation of Jewish people were rendered "lawful" within that legal order. That formal legality did not shield judges, prosecutors, and other officials from accountability after the war. At the Nuremberg trials, the international community recognized that decisions consistent with domestic law could nevertheless constitute profound moral and legal wrongs under higher principles of international law.

History repeatedly demonstrates that the mere existence of criminal charges under national law cannot, by itself, justify international cooperation in their enforcement. 

This principle is now reflected in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the broader framework of international human rights law, which recognize that governments may misuse criminal legislation to persecute political opponents, journalists, dissidents, and other protected individuals.

Against that backdrop, INTERPOL's repeated reliance on the formal existence of national criminal proceedings—while disregarding credible evidence that those proceedings are politically motivated—raises a fundamental question. Is this truly neutrality, or is it deliberate institutional indifference disguised as neutrality, making INTERPOL one of the world's principal sources of transnational repression?