How do you remove an INTERPOL Red Notice? The short version, from an INTERPOL Red Notice lawyer.

Spin dictators rarely need hit squads. A Red Notice request labelled fraud freezes accounts, blocks borders and silences a critic at arm's length. When policing turns political, the machinery of cooperation is the weapon. Rhys Davies and I examined it at Leiden in July.

Aysoltan Niyazova of Pussy Riot was detained at the Polish-Lithuanian border in 2025 on a Turkmen Red Notice she had already defeated in Croatia in 2022. INTERPOL invalidated it in February 2026, 24 years after it was first issued. A deletion is only as good as its enforcement.

A Red Notice exists to locate someone and secure extradition. When the state knows where the person lives and has made no request, the notice has become a substitute for law enforcement. Article 81(d) of INTERPOL's rules says cancel it. The CCF has deleted notices on that basis.

Deciding whether to go public is a risk analysis: whether publicity puts the client in more danger, and whether family or colleagues still in the country will pay for it. One client with strong evidence of torture chose silence, because the people left behind would pay.

My clients are attacked by states, business rivals and former partners who bring fabricated criminal and civil cases to destroy them. A Red Notice, a sanctions listing, a charge left on the record for years. The reputation goes first. The law catches up later, if at all.

Some nationality laws still do not pass through the mother. A child born abroad to such a mother can hold no nationality at all. The 1961 Convention on the Reduction of Statelessness exists because of that maternity ward problem, and sixty-five years on it still needs invoking.

I am shortlisted for Reputation Lawyer of the Year at the Spear's Awards 2026. The category is for lawyers who defend a client's privacy and good name. Most reputation lawyers face newspapers. I face states. Winners announced next Tuesday at Raffles London at The OWO.

The seven CCF members elected in Hong Kong will decide every Red Notice challenge from March 2027. Newly elected members serve five years, re-elected members three. For most people the Commission is the only body that will ever examine the notice against them.

A compliance officer who sees a customer's name next to the words stolen and INTERPOL has one safe course: freeze the account. The first bank froze and the others followed. The burden then moves to the customer to prove, account by account, where money held for years came from.

The UN Committee against Torture has a judicial function as well as a reporting one, and its interim measures can stop a removal. The route depends on the detaining state having accepted individual complaints. The United Kingdom has not. Neither has the United States.

Russia, China, India, Saudi Arabia and Iran have all been accused of pursuing critics on British soil. I told The Guardian why it goes on: the UK government is not prepared to stand up to anybody. Nothing since has changed that view.

In many countries the first step in extradition is provisional arrest: detention before the papers have arrived, on the strength of the request alone. None of it waits for the allegation to be tested. What is done in the first hours sets the limits of everything that follows.

Sanctioning a Brazilian Supreme Court justice meant one government attacking another state's judiciary. The Georgian designations rested on far stronger evidence and still achieved little: they handed Georgian Dream a story of Western interference.

A businesswoman charged with issuing false VAT invoices had never held office. She chaired a company linked to a politician who criticised the state. The CCF asked the requesting country what she had personally gained. It never answered. The notice fell. rednoticemonitor.com/interpo…

INTERPOL Law and Practice comes with model CCF documents, checklists and tables of the arguments commonly raised before the Commission. Rhys Davies and I wrote it for practitioners who need to assess risk quickly and advise with confidence. sweetandmaxwell.co.uk/en-gb/…

You have four months from the final domestic decision to lodge an application in Strasbourg, down from six under Protocol 15. A Rule 39 application runs on a far shorter clock, because it must reach the Court before the removal happens. Both deadlines are hard.