Interpol

Also known as: International Criminal Police Organization · ICPO-INTERPOL · International Criminal Police Commission · ICPC · INTERPOL Manila

Government

Definition

Interpol — the International Criminal Police Organization (ICPO-INTERPOL) — is the world’s largest international police organization, a global cooperation body of 196 member countries headquartered in Lyon, France. It was founded on September 7, 1923, at the close of a five-day International Police Congress in Vienna as the International Criminal Police Commission (ICPC), adopted its modern constitution and the name Interpol in 1956, and moved to its present Lyon headquarters in 1989. Interpol is not a supranational police force: it makes no arrests of its own, and its work runs through a National Central Bureau (NCB) in each member state, of which INTERPOL Manila is the Philippines’ bureau. (Wikipedia — Interpol, INTERPOL — Member countries)

The organization’s operating currency is the notice — most prominently the Red Notice, officially “a request to law enforcement worldwide to locate and provisionally arrest a person pending extradition, surrender, or similar legal action,” which “is not an arrest warrant.” Its constitutional firewall, Article 3 of the 1956 constitution, strictly forbids “any intervention or activities of a political, military, religious or racial character.” The Philippine record runs through both instruments: the March 11, 2025 arrest of former president Rodrigo Duterte on an International Criminal Court warrant transmitted through the Interpol channel, the Red Notice that pursued fugitive chairman Carlos Ghosn documented in this wiki’s entry of that name, and the notices sought against former lawmaker Zaldy Co amid the flood-control investigations. (INTERPOL — Red Notices, Wikipedia — Duterte arrest)

Identities

Source	Identifier	URL
Wikipedia	Interpol	https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interpol
Wikidata	Interpol (Q8475)	https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q8475
DBpedia	Interpol	https://dbpedia.org/page/Interpol
ProductOntology	N/A	N/A
Wiktionary	Interpol	https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Interpol
Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH)	International Criminal Police Organization (n80090100)	https://id.loc.gov/authorities/names/n80090100
MeSH	N/A	N/A
NCBI Taxonomy	N/A	N/A
AGROVOC	N/A	N/A
Google Scholar	Interpol Red Notice transnational policing political offense Philippines Duterte ICC	https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=Interpol+Red+Notice+transnational+policing+political+offense
ConceptNet	interpol	https://conceptnet.io/c/en/interpol
OpenCyc	N/A	N/A

Also Known As

International Criminal Police Organization
ICPO-INTERPOL
International Criminal Police Commission
ICPC
INTERPOL Manila

Examples and Analogies

A switchboard, not a world police: Interpol functions like an international telephone exchange for police forces — every member state speaks only through its own National Central Bureau, and the Lyon secretariat routes the traffic; no Interpol officer patrols any street, and every arrest is made by a member country’s own police acting under its own law. (Wikipedia — Interpol)
The Red Notice as a global wanted-poster request: a Red Notice is a member country’s warrant translated into an international alert — roughly 66,370 valid Red Notices were in circulation by the end of the 2010s, of which only a minority were public — but it binds no court and authorizes no arrest by itself. (INTERPOL — Red Notices, Wikipedia — Interpol)
Neutrality as a firewall: Article 3’s ban on political, military, religious, or racial intervention operates like a circuit breaker — cases touching those currents are supposed to be refused service, the rule most tested whenever a former head of state becomes a fugitive.
Verified organizational data:
Founded: September 7, 1923, Vienna, as the ICPC — 22 delegates, under Vienna police president Johannes Schober (Wikipedia — Interpol)
Constitution and name: 1956 — “Interpol” derives from the telegraphic address used since 1946 (Wikipedia — Interpol)
Headquarters: Lyon, France, since 1989; previously Paris and Saint-Cloud (Wikipedia — Interpol)
Membership: 196 member countries (INTERPOL — Member countries)
Structure: one National Central Bureau per member state (Wikipedia — Interpol)
Philippine presidency: NBI Director Jolly Bugarin headed the Interpol Manila NCB and served as Interpol President 1980–1984 (Wikipedia — Bugarin)

Usage Scenarios

1. Requesting and Acting on International Notices

Member states request and execute Interpol notices: the Philippines’ Department of Justice sought a Blue Notice — the information-gathering notice on a person’s identity, location, or activities — against former lawmaker Zaldy Co in September 2025 as the flood-control investigation widened, and Philippine authorities have since pressed a Red Notice request that remained unacted on as of this entry’s October 2026 verification. (OneNews)

2. Locating Fugitives Across Borders

Philippine investigators use the NCB channel to trace fugitives who leave the country and to receive foreign requests for arrests on Philippine soil; the bureau’s standing is what made the PNP describe itself in March 2025 as duty-bound to cooperate with Interpol requests in the lead-up to the Duterte arrest. (Wikipedia — Duterte arrest)

3. Executing International Court Warrants

The March 11, 2025 Duterte arrest documents the mechanism: the ICC reached out to Interpol for the execution of its warrant, the copy reached the Office of the President through the Interpol Manila office at about 03:00 that morning, and the Philippine National Police enforced the warrant “in coordination with Interpol, not the ICC” — the arrest executed by national police on a warrant routed through the international channel. (Wikipedia — Duterte arrest)

4. Studying the Limits of Police Neutrality

Scholars of international law use Article 3 cases to test where crime ends and politics begins — the standing question whenever notices are sought against officials who claim political persecution, the debate that has shadowed every high-profile Philippine notice request since 2025. (INTERPOL — Red Notices)

Strategies

Cooperate through national channels: Interpol’s architecture keeps sovereignty intact — each state acts through its own NCB under its own law — which is why Philippine enforcement statements always pair “Interpol” with “coordination” rather than “instruction.” (Wikipedia — Interpol)
Tier the notices to the need: the system distinguishes information-gathering Blue Notices from arrest-requesting Red Notices; the Zaldy Co sequence — Blue Notice first, Red Notice sought after warrants issued — shows the escalation logic in practice. (OneNews)
Route court warrants through the police channel: the Duterte arrest demonstrates the pattern for international tribunals that lack their own enforcement arms: the ICC’s warrant traveled via Interpol to Philippine authorities. (Wikipedia — Duterte arrest)
Report the record, not the expectation: for living matters this wiki records what is documented — requests made, notices issued or pending, arrests executed — and leaves predictions to none.

Security and Safety Measures

Notices are not warrants: Interpol’s own definition — a request to locate and provisionally arrest, “not an arrest warrant” — is the primary safeguard against notices being treated as convictions; the standard Philippine reporting practice treats a Red Notice subject as wanted, not guilty. (INTERPOL — Red Notices)
Article 3 screening: the constitutional prohibition on political, military, religious, or racial interventions requires refusal of politically motivated notice requests — the review that reportedly precedes rulings on contested national requests. (Wikipedia — Interpol)
Documented custody standards: the Duterte record — arrest at the airport, detention at Villamor Air Base, same-day charter flight, arrival at The Hague on March 12, 2025, first appearance by videolink on March 14 — stands as the documented custody sequence for an Interpol-coordinated arrest of a former head of state. (Wikipedia — Duterte arrest)
For researchers: pending matters (notice requests not yet ruled on, trials under way) are recorded here as current status only, with dates, per the corpus standard for living legal affairs.

Historical Context

The organization was born of practical police frustration with borders: at Vienna in September 1923, delegates principally from European forces constituted the International Criminal Police Commission, which grew into a standing correspondence network. Its darkest chapter followed the 1938 Anschluss, when the Vienna-based commission fell under Nazi control and moved to Berlin in 1942, its presidency passing through SS generals including Reinhard Heydrich and Ernst Kaltenbrunner. Revived in 1946 under the telegraphic address “Interpol,” it adopted a new constitution and its present name in 1956, settled at Saint-Cloud, and moved to Lyon in 1989; membership grew to today’s 196 states, including every Southeast Asian nation. (Wikipedia — Interpol, INTERPOL — Member countries)

The Philippine record is older than the modern constitution. Jolly R. Bugarin, the criminologist who directed the National Bureau of Investigation from 1967 to 1986, represented the Philippines at Interpol conferences for two decades, headed the Interpol Manila National Central Bureau, sat on the Executive Committee, and was elected President of Interpol in 1980, serving until 1984 — the first Filipino to lead the organization. (Wikipedia — Bugarin)

The 2020s put the Philippines at the center of Interpol’s hardest cases. Japan obtained the Red Notice against fugitive chairman Carlos Ghosn that Lebanese authorities received on January 2, 2020 — the flight documented in this wiki’s Carlos Ghosn entry. On March 11, 2025, former president Rodrigo Duterte was arrested at Manila’s international airport on an ICC warrant for crimes against humanity of murder in the drug war, transmitted through the Interpol Manila office in the early morning hours; President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. stated the arrest was carried out “in cooperation with Interpol,” not on the ICC’s behalf, and Duterte was flown to the ICC at The Hague the same day. His confirmation-of-charges hearing was held February 23–27, 2026, and he remains in the ICC detention unit as of October 2026. From September 2025, the flood-control corruption investigations produced the Zaldy Co sequence — a Blue Notice sought by the DOJ on September 26, confirmed out by November, and a Red Notice requested by the NBI in December 2025 and still the object of Philippine follow-up through Lyon as of September 2026. (Wikipedia — Duterte arrest, OneNews)

Challenges and Controversies

The Nazi-era Record

Between 1938 and 1945 the organization was controlled by the Nazi regime, its headquarters moved to Berlin and its presidents drawn from the SS and police leadership — a documented history that shadows the organization’s neutrality claims and is standard in any account of its institutional evolution. (Wikipedia — Interpol)

Article 3 and Politically Charged Cases

The Duterte arrest raised the Article 3 question in its sharpest form: an ICC warrant against a former president whose supporters called the prosecution political, executed through an organization constitutionally barred from political interventions. The documented record holds that the arrest proceeded as Interpol-coordinated cooperation under the Philippines’ obligations, with no formal Red Notice recorded in the arrest account — and the constitutional debate is recorded here as commentary, not adjudicated fact. (Wikipedia — Duterte arrest)

Contested Notice Requests and the Waiting Period

The Zaldy Co matter documents the system’s friction: Philippine authorities requested notices from September 2025 while Co’s camp characterized the prosecution as political persecution, and by this entry’s October 2026 verification no Red Notice had been confirmed issued — the interval between national warrant and international alert that tests both Article 3 review and requesting states’ patience. (OneNews)