The Interpol-related detention of Kremlin critic Bill Browder in Spain on Wednesday is truly cause for alarm.
Browder, a British businessman born in Chicago, was once represented in Russia by the late Sergei Magnitsky — the attorney who was subsequently arrested and died in a Russian prison from being physically abused and medically neglected. The reason for Magnitsky’s arrest was that he had made allegations of corruption among Russian President Vladimir Putin’s cronies.
The U.S. enacted new sanctions against Russia partly as a result of Magnitsky’s treatment and death, and the event also caused Browder to become an outspoken critic of Putin.
And thanks to Russian meddling, he was arrested in Madrid by Spanish Police on an Interpol warrant. Although Interpol denies any of its special international arrest warrants are in operation against Browder, the reporting behind this story strongly indicates otherwise. Specifically, it appears that Russia secured the British citizen’s arrest by unilaterally entering his name into an Interpol arrest-on-sight database.
The U.S. must demand that Interpol cease serving Putin as a useful patsy. Interpol must ensure this episode is not repeated. Otherwise, the U.S. government should suspend its cooperation with the international police agency.
We recognize that such a suspension would be a drastic step. Interpol serves as a global clearing house for arrest warrants targeting some of the world’s most dangerous criminals. Those on color-notice warrants include human traffickers, murderers, terrorists, war criminals, and international drug dealers. Interpol’s work in detaining those individuals is both important and moral.
Yet Interpol obviously faces a very serious structural problem if its processes can be used in this way to target an innocent man for arrest. Browder’s Twitter photographs of being bundled into the back of a police car and forced to languish in custody for hours are inexcusable in a democracy. And Interpol’s deflection of blame is a woefully inadequate remedy to the harm that has been done.
The harm here goes well beyond Browder’s temporary loss of freedom. The real danger is Putin’s ability to reach so far beyond his borders and diminish the rule of law in Western Europe, not just by manipulating public opinion through protected expression but by manipulating Western law enforcement as well.
While Interpol has in recent years made it harder for Russia to manipulate its notice-arrest system, the law enforcement agency continues to face repeated Russian efforts to arrest Putin’s political critics. Interpol could have resolved these issues, but it has not. Going forward, Interpol should judge Russian requests-for-arrest with exceptional scrutiny. It should also consider doing the same for Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s Turkey and for other regimes that disguise political repression with the trappings of criminal law processes.
Browder’s short but serious Spanish escapade shows that Interpol’s reform is overdue. And the U.S. has the authority to make demands: In 2017, the U.S. government provided nearly twice as much funding for Interpol operations as any other nation. That funding amounted to ten times Russia’s contribution and twenty times Turkey’s contribution. Alongside the money, U.S. law enforcement agencies provide Interpol with crucial intelligence leads and organizational support.
More importantly, what the U.S. would be asking for here is very simple and attainable. If Interpol continues to encounter Russian efforts to disrupt its mission, it would lose a lot less by suspending Russia’s membership than it would by letting the U.S. go.
