A Red Notice is not an arrest warrant, yet arrest is what it is designed to produce. In many countries a notice is acted on as a request for provisional arrest pending a formal extradition request, although each country decides for itself what legal value to give it, and the days that follow it decide a great deal: whether you are held or released on conditions, whether a court ever examines the lawfulness of the detention, and whether the State that detained you can later be answerable in Strasbourg. This page explains what Article 5 of the Convention requires of a State that arrests someone on the strength of an INTERPOL notice.
What happens when a notice is matched
Article 87 of INTERPOL’s Rules on the Processing of Data sets out the steps once a person subject to a Red Notice is located. The country where the person is found informs the requesting National Central Bureau and the General Secretariat, and takes “all other measures permitted under national law and applicable international treaties, such as provisionally arresting the wanted person or monitoring or restricting his/her movement”. The requesting bureau must then act immediately, in particular by sending the data and supporting documents within the time limits defined for the case.
Two things follow from that wording. The arrest is an act of the State, taken under its own law — INTERPOL neither orders nor can prevent it. And the clock starts immediately: extradition treaties set short deadlines within which the requesting State must produce a full extradition request, failing which the person is to be released. The applicable deadline depends on the treaty in force between the two countries, and it is the first thing to establish. The text of the Rules referred to here is published among INTERPOL’s legal documents.
At a glance
| Article 5 | What it requires after an arrest on a notice |
|---|---|
| Ground relied on | Article 5 § 1 (f) — action taken with a view to deportation or extradition |
| Lawfulness | A basis in national law, applied in a way that is accessible, precise and free from arbitrariness |
| Duration | Justified only while extradition proceedings are in progress and are prosecuted with due diligence |
| Information | Article 5 § 2 — prompt information, in a language you understand, of the reasons for arrest |
| Judicial review | Article 5 § 4 — a court must be able to decide speedily on the lawfulness of the detention |
| Compensation | Article 5 § 5 — an enforceable right to compensation where the detention breached Article 5 |
Detention “with a view to extradition”
Article 5 § 1 permits deprivation of liberty only on one of the grounds it lists. The one in play here is sub-paragraph (f): the lawful arrest or detention of a person against whom action is being taken with a view to deportation or extradition. Unlike detention on remand, this ground does not require reasonable suspicion of an offence to be established before the detaining court — which is precisely why it is open to misuse where the underlying notice is unfounded.
The Court’s case law supplies the limits. Detention under this head is justified only for as long as extradition or deportation proceedings are in progress and are being pursued with due diligence; if the proceedings are not conducted with the required diligence, the detention ceases to be permissible, as the Grand Chamber confirmed in Chahal v. the United Kingdom. Detention must also be lawful in the domestic sense and free from arbitrariness, and the difference between a deprivation of liberty and a mere restriction on movement is one of degree and intensity, as the Court explained in Guzzardi v. Italy. And where there is no genuine, actively pursued removal process behind the detention, it falls outside sub-paragraph (f) altogether — the position examined by the Grand Chamber in A. and Others v. the United Kingdom, where foreign nationals who could not be removed because of the risk awaiting them were held indefinitely.
The right to have a court look at it
Article 5 § 4 is the provision that matters most in practice, and the one most often missing in a Red Notice case. It entitles anyone deprived of liberty to take proceedings by which the lawfulness of the detention is decided speedily by a court, and the review must be a real one: a court that can only confirm that a notice exists, without examining whether the detention remains justified, does not satisfy it. Where a State detains on the basis of an INTERPOL notice and provides no procedure to test that detention, the complaint is not about INTERPOL — it is about the State.
Article 5 § 2 requires that you be told promptly, in a language you understand, why you have been arrested; in practice this means the substance of the accusation, not simply the existence of a notice. Article 5 § 5 gives an enforceable right to compensation where any of these guarantees has been breached, and a domestic claim for compensation is often the remedy that has to be exhausted before Strasbourg will hear the complaint.
The European Union dimension
For Member States of the European Union, one further rule applies. In Case C-505/19 (WS v Bundesrepublik Deutschland), decided by the Grand Chamber of the Court of Justice on 12 May 2021, the Court held that EU law does not prevent provisional arrest on a Red Notice issued at the request of a third State — unless a final judicial decision has established that the person has already been finally dealt with for the same acts in a Contracting State or Member State, in which case the ne bis in idem principle applies. Where that is established, keeping the person on national wanted-persons lists is no longer necessary: erasure of those entries may be requested under Article 16(2) of Directive (EU) 2016/680, and any data that remain recorded must carry a note that the person may no longer be prosecuted for the same acts in a Member State or a Contracting State. The judgment is available on EUR-Lex.
That judgment binds EU Member States, not the Strasbourg Court. It is nonetheless worth having in the file: it gives a concrete, enforceable argument at the moment of arrest in half of Europe, and it demonstrates that a notice from a third State is not a free pass.
The first days: what should be done
- Obtain in writing the legal basis for the arrest — the notice or diffusion, the national decision authorising detention, and the treaty relied on.
- Establish the deadline set by the applicable treaty for the requesting State to produce a full extradition request, and diarise it. Expiry of that deadline is a ground for release in its own right, independent of the merits.
- Ask the court for release on conditions, with the weaknesses of the underlying notice put in evidence, including any excluded category of offence under Article 83 of INTERPOL’s rules.
- Where removal to a country of risk is possible, prepare the Article 3 case and, if removal is imminent, a request for an interim measure under Rule 39 in parallel.
- Lodge the request to the Commission for the Control of INTERPOL’s Files. It will not resolve the arrest, but a deletion decision removes the instrument that produces the next one.
- Preserve the record for a possible Strasbourg application: dates, decisions, refusals, and every request for review that was not answered.
We are lawyers in INTERPOL-related cases. We have no affiliation with INTERPOL, which neither appoints nor accredits lawyers for or against individuals.
Detained on an INTERPOL notice?
Time limits in these cases run in days. Our lawyers in Convention cases act in detention and extradition proceedings and prepare urgent applications to Strasbourg where removal is imminent.
Frequently Asked Questions
Can I be arrested in any country because of a Red Notice?
Not automatically. INTERPOL cannot compel any country to arrest anyone, and each member country decides what legal value it gives to a notice under its own law. Some States treat a Red Notice as a sufficient basis for provisional arrest; others require a separate national decision first. The practical consequence is that the same notice produces very different outcomes at different borders.
How long can I be held while extradition is considered?
There is no single figure. Detention is permissible under Article 5 § 1 (f) only while extradition proceedings are in progress and are being pursued with due diligence, and national law and the applicable treaty set outer limits, including short deadlines for the requesting State to submit its formal request. Detention that continues after the process has stalled is open to challenge.
Does the European Court of Human Rights review the underlying accusation?
No. The Court does not decide whether the charges in the requesting country are true. It examines whether the respondent State complied with the Convention — whether the detention had a lawful basis and a genuine removal purpose, whether a court reviewed it speedily, and whether removal would expose you to a real risk of treatment contrary to the Convention.
I was released. Is the case over?
Release ends the detention, not the notice. Unless the data are deleted from INTERPOL’s system, the same match can occur at the next border crossing. That is why a release is usually the moment to start a deletion request rather than the moment to stop.