SEIMAS OF THE REPUBLIC OF LITHUANIA
RESOLUTION
ON THE FUTURE OF INTERPOL
20 November 2018 No XIII-1652
Vilnius
The Seimas of the Republic of Lithuania,
emphasizing that the largest international criminal police organization in the world, Interpol, was founded almost 100 years ago in pursuit of the crucial goal of facilitating cross-border cooperation in combating crime and data exchange, however in recent years Interpol has increasingly become a tool for non-democratic regimes to persecute political opponents and critics;
recalling the long-standing and systematic attempts by the Russian Federation to use the Interpol system for the purpose of arresting and extraditing, with the help of law enforcement institutions of democratic states, Kremlin critics outside Russia, including businessman Bill Browder, Estonian politician Eerik-Niiles Kross, journalist Petr Silaev, leader of the Chechen opposition Akhmed Zakayev, Alexei Navalny’s counterpart Nikita Kulachenkov, etc.;
noting that, despite the apparent necessity, Interpol has not yet developed any effective protection against the abusive use of arrest warrants by non-democratic regimes and the system of so-called ‘Red Notices’ in pursuit of political goals and persecuting opponents and critics, even when they have fled because of persecution, reside in democratic states and lawfully expect to be protected under the rule of law against tampering and reprisal;
pointing out that the currently held 87th Interpol General Assembly is to elect the President of Interpol to take the place of the former head of this organization who went missing in uncertain circumstances and that the likely winner is one of the two candidates, a long-standing internal affairs officer of the Russian Federation and a former head of the Interpol National Central Bureau for Russia for seven years, Alexander Prokopchuk, who is directly responsible for Russia’s politically biased requests for the arrest and extradition of the persons unfavourable towards the Kremlin who reside abroad:
notes that the election as head of Interpol of Alexander Prokopchuk, i.e. a candidate of the Member Country which systematically abuses the Interpol system and uses it as a measure of political pressure and persecution rather than a legal instrument and an official who has contributed to manipulation with the Interpol system, would strike an enormous and hard-to-reverse blow to the reputation of this organization and the confidence in the organization’s legal neutrality,
urges the delegate of the Government of the Republic of Lithuania at the Interpol General Assembly, Eimutis Misiūnas, to unequivocally support an alternative candidate nominated by the democratic state in the election of the President of Interpol and to submit proposals to reform and increase Interpol’s resilience to political persecution and abuse of the system carried out by non-democratic Member Countries, for example, by depriving the abusive Member Countries of the right to request Red Notices,
calls on all democratic states of the world for whom the protection of universal democratic values is important to consider urgently the future of Interpol, the potential fundamentally strengthen its resilience to the illegal political abuse of the system by non-democratic regimes when persecuting political opponents or to set up a new international organization for cooperation of the criminal police which would duly pursue the objectives of legal cooperation,
declares that if Alexander Prokopchuk was elected as the head of Interpol, Lithuania should immediately consider together with other democratic states the possibility of withdrawing from this organization.
Speaker of the Seimas Viktoras Pranckietis