Interpol, the world’s largest policing organization, has expanded oversight of databases that autocrats and strongmen have used to monitor and harass political dissidents, a senior Interpol official said on Thursday.
The changes affect two systems, known as blue notices and green notices, that allow governments to alert each other about suspects traveling abroad. Interpol regards these systems as key tools in fighting international crime and terrorism.
The changes follow a New York Times investigation earlier this year.
Authoritarian governments have long attempted to misuse Interpol. The agency spent years cleaning up its system of red notices, which function like international arrest warrants and have been used to seek the arrest and detention of dissidents and political asylum seekers.
But The Times showed that, with the world’s eyes on red notices, some governments were targeting lesser-known Interpol databases.
Belarus and Turkey, for example, turned Interpol’s database of lost and stolen passports into a weapon to harass dissidents or strand them abroad. Abuse got so bad that Interpol temporarily blocked Turkey from using it, and Belarus is subject to special monitoring.
Blue notices are government alerts that seek police information on someone who is abroad. The number of blue notices roughly doubled over the past decade. Green notices allow governments to warn each other about people’s criminal activities.
Until now, Interpol had reviewed those notices only after they had been circulated. It will now check them before they are issued.
“We did realize that some countries saw that we were likely to decline a red notice so they now submit it as a blue notice to circumvent our checks,” Yaron Gottlieb, who heads the team assessing Interpol notices, said in an interview. “But the percentage is not very high.”
Mr. Gottlieb’s team aims to review all blue and green alerts within 48 hours, “especially if a certain country is more likely to use a blue or green notice for a tricky case.” Interpol is also looking at ways to expand oversight of the passport database, he said.
The new policy went into effect this fall, Mr. Gottlieb said. With the change, blue and green notices will get the same scrutiny as red notices.
For some, the change is welcome, but overdue.
“It is an important change to reduce the possibility of abuse and Interpol should have made it years ago,” said Ted R. Bromund, an analyst who has studied Interpol.
The challenge of policing those abuses of Interpol’s systems will fall to the organization’s new secretary general, Valdecy Urquiza of Brazil, who was elected on Tuesday at its annual general assembly in Glasgow, Scotland.
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