The Hindu : Differences must not seep down to police: Interpol chief

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Friday, Oct 17, 2003

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Differences must not seep down to police: Interpol chief

By Vinay Kumar

Photo: Shanker Chakravarty

Ronald K. Noble

NEW DELHI OCT. 16. The visiting Secretary-General of Interpol, Ronald K. Noble, said today that differences between two governments should not be allowed to seep down to the level of the law-enforcing agencies, as that would make the task of policing difficult.

In an oblique reference to the Deputy Prime Minister, L. K. Advani's pointer on the list of India's 20 most wanted criminals and terrorists over which Pakistan has not taken any action, the Interpol chief expressed the view that problems did persist at the government level but police organisations should not be allowed to get into problems. "The Governments themselves will have difficulties if their differences are allowed to seep down to the police level,'' Mr. Noble told The Hindu during the ongoing "Third International Conference on Fugitives''.

Mr. Noble said the first and foremost task of Interpol was to help locate a dreaded criminal or terrorist on the run so as to facilitate a provisional arrest. Political or diplomatic differences should not be allowed to come in the way of confining a fugitive before deportation or extradition proceedings begin. "The governments will fail and the countries will not be safe if fugitives are allowed to roam freely.''

Citing an instance of international police cooperation, Mr. Noble said that it was Libya, and not the United States, which had sought from Interpol the arrest of the Al-Qaeda founder, Osama bin Laden, way back in 1998.

Last year as many as 2,000 fugitives were arrested by using Interpol's database and network spanning 181 member-countries.

The global police organisation was likely to receive requests for the arrest of 10,000 wanted criminals, money-launderers, drug-traffickers, smugglers and economic offenders by next year.

Giving another example, he said Interpol received 738 requests for arrest by Germany last year of which 71 criminals were arrested from 26 countries. "How any one police organisation of a country will be able to communicate with so many countries? It is here that the role of Interpol becomes all the more crucial in establishing and managing global databases.''

Mr. Noble said the extradition laws were complicated, loaded in favour of the accused and the process itself took very long. He stressed the need for uniformity in the extradition laws and endowing them with greater respect and legal validity.

As the Secretary-General of Interpol, what are his concerns on the global law and order front? "To make the world a safer and better place, we have to track down international drug-traffickers, smugglers, terrorists, illegal arms traffickers and terrorists. Today's criminal knows no international boundary. So Interpol member-countries have to adopt a more pro-active approach in locating and hunting the fugitives,'' he said.

On the increasing number of cases of cyber crimes and frauds on Internet, Mr. Noble said that fraudulent schemes promising "soon-to-get-rich" plans abound and Nigeria had seen a number of such cases in recent times. The fear of hacking and e-frauds threatened the international financial and banking systems where daily transactions ran into billions of dollars.

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