UAE (Washington Insider Magazine) -The annual meeting of the Interpol General Assembly takes place in a few days, and is expected to select a new president, with one candidate “unsuitable for the role.”
The 89th meeting, which will take place from Nov. 23-25 in Turkey, will also elect seven members of the Commission for the Control of Interpol’s Files.
One candidate activists are hoping not to see elected president of the International Crime Police Organization is Major General Ahmed Naser Al-Raisi, who retired British Judge David Calvert-Smith said would not be fit for the position.
“He sits at the very top of the Emirati criminal justice system,” Calvert-Smith said. “He has overseen an increased crackdown on dissent, continued torture, and abuses in its criminal justice system.”
The UAE is allegedly known to have a history of Interpol abuse, most notably from unfunded checks requiring Red Notices from unpaid mortgages.
Raisi has been the general inspector for the United Arab Emirates since 2015, and is a well-known figure to the British Foreign Office as he was responsible for the arrest of Matthew Hedges.
Hedges was a British doctoral student who was on a two-week trip to the UAE in 2018 and was arrested on suspicion of spying on the British government. He spent six months in solitary confinement, but was pardoned in November as part of the UAE National Day.
“It terribly worries me that the man that presided over my husband’s extrajudicial detention and torture is now being considered to run Interpol,” Hedges’ wife, Daniel Tejada, said.
The organization, which is based in France and staffs over 1,000 people, is an international police force which investigates crimes, issues international arrest warrants, and has agents across the world helping to arrest criminals. However, since 2009, the use of Interpol has mainly been to harass politicians and entrepreneurs.
The United States plans to ensure qualified candidates from law-abiding democracies fill the position this year, as North America has not had a president since the early 1990s.
With the UAE hoping to buy the presidency this year, much like China did in 2016, it will be up to the U.S. to watch for any coups or bribery from the country.