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Quattrocchi has to worry where he travels, says Interpol chief

Vinay Kumar

Only India’s evidentiary package judged, not Interpol notice: Noble
Our database on suspected terrorists has increased, he says

NEW DELHI: Despite having been let off by Argentina recently, the Bofors payoffs case accused Ottavio Quattrocchi has to worry about his international travel plans as another country may well decide to enforce the still alive Interpol Red Corner notice against him, Interpol Secretary-General Ronald K. Noble said here on Thursday.

Mr. Noble said India’s “evidentiary package” had been judged by independent, sovereign judicial authorities of two countries —Malaysia and Argentina — in the recent past and they did not allow the extradition of the Italian businessman.

“Just two of the 190 countries have reviewed not the Interpol’s Red Corner notice against Mr. Quattrocchi but the evidentiary package given by India. They decided that it does not satisfy the standards of those two countries. Mr. Quattrocchi’s got to worry about where he travels, and a third country may decide that maybe India has evidence against him,” Mr. Noble told The Hindu.

“This is not a failure of the Interpol’s Red Corner notice system, this shows that the system works. Based on it, he had been identified, located, brought to justice and an independent sovereign judicial authority has judged not the Red Corner notice but India’s evidentiary package,” he said.

War on terrorism

Dwelling on the global war against terrorism and the recent case of an Indian doctor Mohammad Haneef being accused of aiding the abortive U.K. terror attacks and detained for some time in Australia, Mr. Noble said he had criticised the U.K. Metropolitan Police for not sharing information with Interpol, which would have resulted in better investigations on the ground.

Referring to Al-Qaeda modules, he said the traditional Al-Qaeda, its links and people inspired by the Al-Qaeda philosophy existed in many countries. “Our database on suspected terrorists has increased from 2,800 in 2002 to 11,800 at present. We know that terrorists will travel on aliases and we have a database on stolen passports and travel documents. Our database on lost passports has increased from 3,000 in 2002 to over seven million this year and this is when only 128 out of 186 countries have participated in creating this database,” he said.

Funds transfer

Describing the transfer of funds through illegal hawala channels and the electronic route for financing terror attacks globally as a “very difficult area,” Mr. Noble said it was the “most complex area” of the probe to track down people not known as suspected terrorists and companies not linked to terrorism.

On Red Corner notices, he said countries often zealously guarded their sovereign right to inform as to who got arrested in their territory. “Countries have national laws that say they cannot extradite their nationals, no one can be arrested unless evidence is brought to the court and we have countries that believe that Red Corner notices that come from so-called ‘enemy countries’ should not be used in their own countries. For a variety of reasons, countries are not going to say they will respect every other Red Corner notice. What we are going to do is move forward on this issue and tell more countries to integrate such notices in their national system so that they can at least provide a basis for detaining or arresting someone until he or she is brought before the national judicial system. From 1,500 persons being detained in 2001, the number has increased to over 4,200 in 2006.”

He said that post-2005 Interpol’s database on stolen and lost passports and travel documents had been endorsed by the United Nations and the world body had encouraged more and more countries to use it.

Three challenges

Mr. Noble named three challenges before Interpol — to persuade all countries, including India, to consult the stolen travel documents database which is being used by only 17 countries on a regular basis; to limit travel of suspected terrorists by ensuring that stolen travel documents do not fall into their hands and to make people understand that even though there may be highly publicised cases that reflect problems in the way the system works it does not mean that the system does not work. “Statistics show that during 2000-07 the number of times police have shared information through Interpol has gone up from three million to nine million, the number of suspects searched for terrorist crime has increased seven times and the number of arrests also increased,” he said.

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