What are the 10 most wanted nationalities by Interpol? And the most requested countries for red notices?

Red Notices are one of the most powerful tools of the International Police Service (Interpol) for coordination between police services in member states to fight crime. They are not arrest warrants because Interpol does not carry out arrests itself. It does not have its own police units, but rather warrants through which it requests law enforcement agencies around the world to locate the criminal, detain him temporarily pending extradition, or take similar legal action.

Most Red Notices are not made public on the INTERPOL website, because the use of Red Notices is exclusively by the law enforcement authorities of INTERPOL’s 195 member states and international entities.

Excerpts from these bulletins are published on the INTERPOL website, available to all, if requested by a member state, when public assistance is necessary to locate a wanted person, or this person poses a threat to people’s safety, as stated on the INTERPOL website.

Therefore, INTERPOL allocates a page on its website for anyone who wants to report information about wanted persons in the Red Notices.

The 10 most requested countries in the world to issue red notices:

• Russia: 3 thousand and 220 bulletins (including 3 thousand and 22 people with Russian citizenship, and the rest from multiple nationalities).
• El Salvador: 1095 (of which 1070 are Salvadorans).
• United States: 263 (of which only 93 are Americans).
• Argentina: 659 (of whom only 369 are Argentines).
• India: 271 (of which 195 are Indian).
• Pakistan: 170 (of whom 168 are Pakistanis).
• Guatemala: 125 (of which 114 are from Guatemala).
• Brazil: 112 (of which 68 are Brazilian).
• Bosnia and Herzegovina: 96 (of which 88 hold Bosnian citizenship).
• Jamaica: 60 (of which 52 were Jamaicans).

The 10 most wanted nationalities by Interpol:

• Russians: 3 thousand and 45, including 692 women.
• Salvadorans: 1082, including 92 women.
• Argentines: 375, including 15 women.
• Indians: 211, including 5 women.
• Pakistanis: 203.
• Guatemalans: 132, including 10 women.
• Americans: 110, including 4 women.
• Bolivarians: 107, including 14 women.
• Paraguayans: 104, including 5 women.
• Brazilians: 98, including 10 women.

Little trace

When examining a number of red notices issued at the request of countries that are among the countries that most use this mechanism, it turns out that a country like Russia has most of its red notices related to Russian citizens who have committed several serious crimes, most notably murder, but there are names of citizens of foreign countries, most of which are from neighboring countries. Russia, such as Tajikistan and Uzbekistan, or from Eastern European countries such as Moldova.

It is remarkable that most of those wanted in the red notices requested by the United States do not hold American citizenship, but rather hail from other countries that are mostly neighbors of the United States, led by Mexico (38 wanted), Colombia (17), and Honduras (11), which are countries known With the spread of criminal gangs and drug and human smuggling gangs.

Interpol statistics

In 2021, the General Secretariat of Interpol published about 18,362 bulletins of all kinds, according to the annual report issued by Interpol, and the red notices topped the list of bulletins with about 10,776 bulletins.

In addition to Red Notices, INTERPOL issues different types of notices, which are as follows:

• Blue Notice: To locate, identify, or obtain information about a person of interest in a criminal investigation.
• Green Notice: To warn of the criminal activities of any person if they represent a potential threat to public peace.
• Yellow Notice: Its purpose is to locate a missing person or to identify a person who is unable to be identified.
• Black Notice: For information on unidentified bodies.
• Orange Notice: To warn of an event, person, thing, or process that poses an imminent threat or danger to people or property.
• Joint INTERPOL-UN Security Council notice: intended to inform INTERPOL members that an individual or entity is subject to UN sanctions.
• Purple Notice: To provide information on working methods, procedures, objects, devices or hiding places used by criminals.

It is noted that the number of red notices is constantly changing, in terms of increase or decrease. When Al-Jazeera Net conducted a search on the red notices page on the Interpol website on November 25, 2022, the number of red notices was 7 thousand and 122, while the number decreased on November 30, 2022 to 7 thousand and 111.

In response to Al-Jazeera Net’s questions via e-mail, the Interpol Media Office said that there are no statistics available on the number of individuals arrested in the world based on red notices, because the member states of the International Police do not always provide the General Secretariat of Interpol with this type of information.

It is worth noting that some of those wanted by Interpol are wanted by a number of countries, except for the country of which they hold nationality. We find 18 red notices against Algerian dual nationals wanted by law enforcement authorities on the European continent.

The same applies to 12 red notices against wanted Moroccans from a number of European countries, not the Moroccan authorities, and some of those wanted are linked to the September 11, 2001 attacks in the United States.
In addition, 5 Sudanese are wanted under Interpol’s red notices, all of whom are wanted by the International Criminal Court and the authorities of European countries.

non-state entities

A number of international courts and United Nations entities have the right to request the issuance of Interpol red notices. There are 6 notices of the International Criminal Court for wanted persons, including Saif al-Islam Gaddafi, son of the late Libyan Colonel Muammar Gaddafi.

The Special Tribunal for Lebanon has also previously issued red notices against those accused of the assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri.

Red notices have also previously been issued at the request of the United Nations Interim Administration Mission in Kosovo (UNMIK).

There are currently on the INTERPOL website two publications issued at the request of the “International Residual Mechanism for Criminal Tribunals”, and it is related to two international tribunals established by the United Nations to try those responsible for serious crimes under international humanitarian law, or cases that governments have requested the assistance of the Security Council in investigation and prosecution, including the matter The massacres of Rwanda and former Yugoslavia.

Release mechanism?

The General Secretariat of Interpol publishes red notices based on requests from member states or accredited international entities such as international tribunals of the United Nations, and the Interpol media office explains in answer to Al Jazeera Net’s questions that the red notice is removed from the website of the police organization in a number of cases, including the cancellation of the notice or arrest wanted.

All notices are posted on INTERPOL’s secure website (closed between police agencies), after a compliance check has been completed.

At the request of the member country or international institution, extracts from the notices may also be published on the INTERPOL website, which is open to the public.

The General Secretariat of the International Police may only publish publications that comply with all valid legal requirements. For example, don’t publish a bulletin if it violates Interpol’s constitution, which prohibits the organization from conducting activities of a political, military, religious or racial nature.

Close to Putin

The Intercept, an American investigative journalism website, said: a report Posted on November 11, 2022 He got leaked document Issued by the Interpol Oversight Committee, the document reveals the reason why Interpol canceled a red notice requested by Washington against the Russian citizen Yevgeny Prigozhin, who is close to Russian President Vladimir Putin, and is also the founder of the Wagner mercenary company.

And a federal jury in the United States had previously indicted Prigozhin in 2018 for engaging in an “information war against the United States” as part of the investigations conducted by the US Department of Justice into allegations of Russian interference in the 2018 US presidential elections.

At Washington’s request, Interpol had published a red notice to arrest Prigozhin, but Interpol withdrew the notice in 2020 without stating the reasons. However, a leaked document published by the “Intercept” website revealed that the Interpol oversight body decided that the red notice requested by the United States was of a nature Mostly political, which is a violation of Interpol’s principle of neutrality.

The Intercept stated that Interpol’s decision to write off the red notice against Prigozhin may have reinforced the statements of former US President Donald Trump and his supporters at the time, as he was describing Special Investigator Robert Mueller’s investigations into Russian interference in the 2018 elections as an “absurd act” and “an attempt to link Trump.” with this intervention.

Trump’s arrest warrant

In June 2020, the International Police refused to consider a request by the Iranian judiciary to issue a red notice against then-US President Donald Trump, after Tehran accused him of being behind the assassination of General Qassem Soleimani, commander of the Quds Force of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard.

An INTERPOL media official said that the organization does not interfere in this type of issue of a political nature, according to Article 3 of the organization’s constitution.

General Soleimani was assassinated on January 3, 2020, near Baghdad International Airport, as a result of a strike carried out by an American drone, and it came on orders from former US President Trump.