{"id":198002,"date":"2021-10-25T12:01:31","date_gmt":"2021-10-25T11:01:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=198002"},"modified":"2021-10-25T10:11:01","modified_gmt":"2021-10-25T09:11:01","slug":"has-interpol-become-the-long-arm-of-oppressive-regimes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2021\/10\/has-interpol-become-the-long-arm-of-oppressive-regimes\/","title":{"rendered":"Has Interpol Become the Long Arm of Oppressive Regimes?"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Once used in the hunt for fugitive criminals, the global police agency\u2019s most-wanted \u2018red notice\u2019 list now includes political refugees and dissidents.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

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Transnational repression: \u2018It\u2019s just so against what we expect to see in any justice system, even abusive ones,\u2019 says one lawyer representing wrongfully accused clients wanted through Interpol. Illustration: Sergiy Maidukov\/Guardian<\/p><\/div>\n

17 Oct 2021 – <\/em>F<\/span><\/span>licking through the news one day in early 2015, Alexey Kharis, a California-based businessman and father of two, came across a startling announcement: Russia would request a global call for his arrest through the International Criminal Police Organization, known as Interpol<\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cOh, wow,\u201d Kharis thought, shocked. All the 46-year-old knew about Interpol and its pursuit of the world\u2019s most-wanted criminals was from novels and films. He tried to reassure himself that things would be OK and it was just an intimidatory tactic of the Russian authorities. Surely, he reasoned, the world\u2019s largest police organisation had no reason to launch a hunt for him.<\/p>\n

In the months that followed, Kharis kept checking Interpol\u2019s gallery of thousands of international fugitives. He finally came across his mugshot, glaring back at him like a hardened criminal. \u201cMy God,\u201d he exclaimed, now terrified.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis guy is a terrorist; that guy is a murderer; this guy abducted children \u2013 and there\u2019s me,\u201d he remembers thinking as he looked through the Interpol register.<\/p>\n

It was while running a large construction company in Russia that Kharis first found himself on the wrong side of the authorities. His firm, ZAO Rosdorsnabzhenie, had a government contract in 2010 to renovate shipyards near the far eastern city of Vladivostok. He says his business partner, Igor Borbot, told him about high-level officials embezzling money from the project.<\/p>\n

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Alexey Kharis at home in Palo Alto in July. He spent 15 months locked up in Californian prisons.
Photograph: Talia Herman\/The Guardian<\/p><\/div>\n

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Kharis says he was targeted after he threatened to speak publicly about the ministerial corruption and refused to give false testimony against Borbot. Kharis says agents from Russia\u2019s Federal Security Bureau told him during interrogation in 2013: \u201cYour partner is going down \u2013 you can help us or you can go down with him.\u201d<\/p>\n

He had hoped \u2013 naively, he says now \u2013 that investigations in Russia would clear his name. The Interpol notice confirmed he was wrong. It outlined major fraud charges carrying a 10-year prison sentence, alleging that Kharis was part of a \u201ccriminal group\u201d that had stolen tens of millions of pounds from his own company.<\/p>\n

Ted Bromund, who testified in Kharis\u2019s case in the US as an expert witness, spent days scrutinising the case files and came to believe that the charges were baseless. \u201cThey don\u2019t seem to have any substance whatsoever,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

Bromund, an international affairs specialist with a rightwing US thinktank, the Heritage Foundation, concluded that this was the latest in a pattern of Russian attempts to weaponise Interpol with trumped-up requests to arrest its nationals. According to the US rights organisation Freedom House, Russia is responsible for 38% of all public red notices<\/a>.<\/p>\n