Steve Cohen and George Soros in the fight against the “global spread of authoritarianism”
A campaign is underway in the US media to lobby for the Transnational Repression Accountability and Prevention Act of 2021 [TRAP-2021], a bill introduced in the US Congress. This act makes it possible for US law enforcement agencies to fail to comply with Interpol circulars, including international arrest warrants.
Interpol is the acronym of the International Criminal Police Organization, whose main purpose is to bring together the national law enforcement agencies of participating countries to combat conventional crime. The headquarters of Interpol is located in Lyon, France.
Legislative Bill TRAP-2021 states that Interpol’s Red Notice, along with other Interpol requests, will not be the sole basis for the U.S. government’s decision to arrest or remove a covered individual or deny him or her a visa or asylum.
“The Interpol Red Notice” is a list of felons who have committed particularly serious crimes and have fled the country where the crime occurred in order to escape justice or to avoid serving time for the crime. The INTERPOL website hosts a database of wanted persons with brief information about them, and each INTERPOL member state is obliged to arrest every person on the list when they are found on its territory. The person is then considered for extradition to the country that submitted the search request to Interpol. As of 18 October 2021, 7,711 people were declared internationally wanted.
The TRAP-2021 bill was introduced in the US Congress on July 29, 2021 by Rep. Steve Cohen, Democrat of Tennessee and will be considered in the Foreign Affairs Committee and the Judiciary Committee.
To reiterate: the bill states that an Interpol “red circular”, as well as other requests from that organisation, cannot be the sole basis for a decision by US government authorities to arrest or expel a person mentioned in the document. The motivation is that “some Interpol member countries have repeatedly misused Interpol databases and processes … for activities of a clearly political or other illegal nature and in violation of international human rights standards, including sending requests for persecution of political opponents, human rights defenders or journalists”.
The US, the bill says, would require Interpol to provide statistics on requests and a description of their nature, as well as statistics on denials to countries due to the political nature of their requests. If the law goes into effect, no later than 180 days later, the US Attorney General and Secretary of State will submit to Congress a report on how Interpol member countries have misused red circulars and other Interpol requests for political and other improper purposes over the past three years.
Public opinion processing in support of the Traceability and Prevention of Transnational Repression bill began in the US media even before it was submitted to Congress. The term “transnational repression” itself was coined at the notorious Freedom House, whose budget is 80 per cent funded by the State Department. This organisation has long ago turned into an instrument of US foreign policy, becoming a “human rights” cudgel.
Just Security, a portal funded by Soros, began campaigning for a broader fight against “transnational repression” a month before Cohen introduced his bill in Congress. The portal’s author, Jana Gorokhowska, is not amused that the Biden administration is not doing enough to combat the “global spread of authoritarianism” and the sinister “autocrats who try to capture their dissidents and activists overseas” with Interpol “red circulars”. A new meme has been coined – “Interpol abuse”, or “politically motivated manipulation” by the International Criminal Police, which the US State Department is not fighting as effectively as the Freedom House Democrats would like to see.
Russia, China, Iran, Turkey, Venezuela, Tajikistan and Azerbaijan are on the list of countries abusing Interpol red circulars, according to the State Department and Freedom House.
On July 29, the day TRAP-2021 was introduced in the US Congress, the website of NATO Atlantic Council*, recognized as an organisation undesirable by the Russian General Prosecutor’s Office, published an impressive list of examples of “transnational repression”, essentially the attempts by sovereign nations to suppress the subversive activities of “dissidents and activists”, that is, agents of Western intelligence services. Writing for The Washington Post, Atlantic Council expert Ghissou Nia urged congressmen to support TRAP-2021, putting Interpol’s “red circulars” on a par with murder, torture, kidnapping, disinformation, and cyberattacks.
On August 18, The Washington Post broke out with How increasingly audacious autocrats wield the tools of transnational repression.
On August 28, in an editorial, Repression Without Borders, The New York Times called on Congress to support Steve Cohen’s bill as “authoritarian leaders use their repressive tactics on a global scale.
On September 24, Transparency International’s US office* issued a statement urging the US Senate to support the draft “Tracking and Preventing Transnational Repression Act” under consideration in Congress.
The campaign in support of the bill has already gone beyond the US borders. “Interpol has become the long arm of repressive regimes,” the UK’s The Guardian wrote in an October 18 publication, arguing that some countries are using Interpol red circulars to persecute political opponents abroad.
Thus, under the banner of combating mythical “transnational repression”, the U.S. embarked on a path of discrediting reputable international organizations that fight international crime.
*Organisation whose activities are considered undesirable on the territory of Russia
Vladimir Prokhvatilov, FSK