• This is your second term as Interpol Secretary General. What is Interpol doing to curb terrorism given the fact that many more countries are being affected by terrorist activities and many more lives being lost?We have a strategy in place for the past 5-6 years. What we are trying to do is to get more countries connected to the global communication system and more countries access documents that might identify terrorists. Our stolen passport database (SLTD—Stolen and Lost Travel Documents) has swelled from 3,000 to seven million. But more countries need to be consulting that database.• What is the global pattern that emerges from these passport frauds?It is a very disturbing pattern. For one, it shows organised human trafficking of Iraqi nationals through Europe and the Caribbean with the targets being the USA and Canada using stolen passports. Terrorists exploit this route easily.• Where does India figure in this global network? Is India proposing to use the SLTD?I spoke to Home Minister Shivraj Patil about this yesterday. We want India to give us its data on stolen passports and for India to start consulting our database before foreigners enter India. Right now, only 17 countries consult it. Once India comes on board it will take four seconds to detect that a passport presented was a stolen one. • How will this be taken forward?The Home Minister and CBI Director Vijay Shankar have said that our technical team and Indian officials should get together and make a formal proposal. We hope to send our proposal to India by November and have things in place by next year.• Any other such spin-offs from the India trip?Let us discuss the Ottavio Quattrocchi case. The fact is that most of the people that India seeks and are detained based on India’s arrest warrants don’t get out. His is an exceptional case.• The plea of Quattrocchi and his lawyers probably will be that he should be taken off the Interpol’s list since India failed to extradite him twice. What is your view?That is for India to decide. What Interpol is saying is that a sovereign has to decide what its standard is before issuing an arrest warrant. Interpol believes in transparency and now when another sovereign sees the Q Red Corner they will say: OK, let off by Argentina and Malaysia.• But this information will not be on the RCN.Yes it will be. There is a public notice and separate data that comes up when there is a hit. Interpol is transparent in letting all member countries know what other member countries have done when faced with the same case.In the Q case, what happens is that his name comes up, the notice comes up and the history of the case comes up. As soon as he goes to a third country, his passport number is in the Red Notice and in our database so that India can be told that he is in a third country. The third country might not want India to know! They may say they do not want another highly publicised case, we are not going to honour India’s Red Corner request.Once there is a hit, his movement from country A to B is no longer an Interpol issue. India then goes to court to seek extradition and it fails, but that is not a failure of Interpol.• With all your experience in international policing matters, is it unusual for a country to fail to extradite someone with an RCN twice over?In 99.95 per cent of the cases when someone is arrested based on an Interpol notice, the person is detained, the arrest warrant is supported and the person is either extradited or not extradited only because there was no extradition treaty.• So you admit the Quattrocchi case is a particularly bad or an extremely curious one.I have been Secretary General for seven years and I believe there might be two or three cases where a country has not respected another country’s request for arrest more than once. There was one such case between Iran and Argentina and then the Pinochet case. That’s all. It’s weird, weird. It’s a very weird situation.• Should the CBI review the Quattrocchi case and remove the Red Notice?Interpol is not a judicial body. Malaysia and Argentina said here’s the notice, it is the same photograph, he is wanted for arrest. India did try to seek his extradition but in reviewing the body of evidence both the courts decided there is not enough there.We currently have about 20,000 Red notices in our database and when we receive a request we assume that everything that is alleged in the Red notice is true. We do not examine the evidence. After a case has been rejected by one court or two courts it is prudent for any prosecutor or police body to review the reasons why the court has rejected it. One reason I have read in the papers—and to me it is not a persuasive reason—is that this is an old case and in our country we cannot pursue something that happened 20 years ago. If I was the country concerned, that would not be reason enough to throw the request away. You have to really look for the reasons why the court did not accept it.• What happens when politics mars the chances of a high-profile case. Where does that leave the prosecuting agency and the Interpol?We don’t let one case drive policy. As a police body we are not allowed to be involved in the case. It may be politics or racial considerations but it later becomes a bilateral issue, a diplomatic function. Don’t contaminate Interpol by making us become political. Let us remain the professional police organisation we are.• Any fresh initiative taken up with the Indian Government?The other issue I discussed with the Home Minister is the use of the Internet and technology for the sexual exploitation of children. We want to get more people trained and be able to investigate these cases.The Minister has agreed and first the CBI and then state agencies will get training to handle this. Children are getting raped and then their movies taken and circulated all over the world, this is an issue Interpol is very serious about.• Even as you visit India, the arrest of Kumaran Padmanathan has been reported in Thailand. What’s the update?We are aggressive in trying to find out what happened. I know there has been an official statement from the Government of Thailand that what has been reported in the press is not true which I respect. We are now waiting for the formal police response. • Is there any possibility of him being allowed to get away?He is a big catch for any country. But I cannot understand why any country that caught him would not disclose the fact. Theoretically speaking, one of the things that happens when you arrest someone is that you don’t want to publicise the arrest so that you can get information from that person. But as of now, we don’t know if KP has been arrested or not. The Interpol has taken every step to find out. Right now, I don’t know what the truth is and as soon as I know, you’ll know.
