A Red Notice for Russian War Crimes
Interpol could help Ukraine catch those who commit atrocities.
The Editorial Board WALL STREET JOURNAL Oct. 11, 2022
Russia continues to bomb civilian targets in Ukraine, amid other atrocities. And when the U.S. announced more than $457 million in additional civilian security assistance for Ukraine last month, some of the money is intended to help Kyiv “document, investigate, and prosecute atrocities,” Secretary of State Antony Blinken said. The U.S. could also help by pressuring the international law-enforcement organization Interpol to do more to apprehend Russian war criminals.
Ukrainian forces liberated more than 10,000 square kilometers of occupied territory in September. As Russians fled from the counteroffensive, they left behind fresh evidence of war crimes.
Kharkiv Governor Oleh Synyehubov said on Telegram last month that 30 of the 436 bodies exhumed from a mass grave in Izyum showed “traces of torture,” including broken limbs and amputated genitalia. At a room in the liberated city of Balakliya, there was blood and excrement on the floor and the Lord’s Prayer etched on the wall. The world witnessed similar horrors after the liberation of the Kyiv suburbs of Bucha, Irpin and Hostomel.
As of Sept. 28 Ukraine had opened more than 34,800 war-crime investigations, and investigators and prosecutors are working to identify and charge suspects. The Security Service of Ukraine and the Council of the European Union have already named some Russians they say are responsible for crimes, including the torture, rape and murder of civilians. Yet these accused war criminals often remain beyond Ukraine’s reach.
That’s where Interpol could help. The law-enforcement agency allows member countries to flag a wanted person, and it issues alerts including “red notices” or “diffusions” to help other member nations detain fugitives as they cross the border. Yet “Interpol is useless when it comes to Russian war crimes,” says Melinda Haring, deputy director of the Atlantic Council’s Eurasia Center. “Regardless of the severity of the war crime, they do not issue red notices.”
Interpol did not respond to our inquiry. A search of its public red notices in circulation revealed only two Russians wanted by Ukraine. Both cases appear to predate the Feb. 24 invasion.
Ms. Haring says Interpol is hiding behind Article 3 of its constitution. That clause prohibits the agency from undertaking “any intervention or activities of a political, military, religious or racial character.”
Interpol would have more credibility on this point if it hadn’t already allowed repressive governments to weaponize the agency against their political foes. Examples abound, but the most famous is how Russia took out a red notice to harass Bill Browder after he championed Magnitsky sanctions against human-rights abusers.
Interpol collects dues from member states, and the U.S. accounted for one-fifth of this funding in 2022, more than any other nation. Interpol also lists the U.S. State Department as one of the “main donors of voluntary (cash) funding in recent years.”
Yet Ted Bromund of the Heritage Foundation found earlier this year that “the democratic world provides 66 percent of Interpol’s operating revenue while controlling only 40 percent of the votes in its governing General Assembly.” Authoritarians like Russia and China exercise influence on the cheap at Interpol.
This amounts to a missed opportunity for the West, and the Biden Administration can bring financial influence to bear in the right cause. Interpol could help ensure those committing atrocities in Ukraine face justice. Red notices would also act as a deterrent by signaling to Russian soldiers that they can’t commit war crimes with impunity.
