It is governed by a General Assembly composed of all member countries, which elects the executive committee and the President (currently Ahmed Naser Al-Raisi of the United Arab Emirates) to supervise and implement Interpol's policies and administration.

[5] Until the 19th century, cooperation among police in different national and political jurisdictions was organized largely on an “ad hoc” basis, focused on a specific goal or criminal enterprise.

A similar plan was launched by Italy in the 1898 Anti-Anarchist Conference of Rome, which brought delegates from 21 European countries to create a formal structure for addressing the international anarchist movement.

[14] The Monaco Congress outlined twelve principles that would eventually form the foundation of Interpol, such as establishing direct communication between police forces in different countries, creating international standards for forensics and data collection, and streamlining the process for handling extradition requests.

Founding members included police officials from Austria, Germany, Belgium, Poland, China, Egypt, France, Greece, Hungary, Italy, the Netherlands, Japan, Romania, Sweden, Switzerland and Yugoslavia.

Following the Anschluss in 1938, the Vienna-based organization fell under the control of Nazi Germany; on November 29, 1941, Interpol had offices at Am Kleinen Wannsee 16;[19] the commission’s headquarters were eventually moved to Berlin in 1942.

Interpol's databases can track criminals and crime trends around the world, specifically by means of authorized collections of fingerprints and face photos, lists of wanted persons, DNA samples, and travel documents.

[39] The organization has constructed the Interpol Global Complex for Innovation (IGCI) in Singapore to act as its research and development facility, and a place of cooperation on digital crimes investigations.

Most notably, a worldwide takedown of the SIMDA botnet infrastructure was coordinated and executed from IGCI's Cyber Fusion Centre in the weeks before the opening, as was revealed at the launch event.

[40] Under the Nazi government of Adolf Hitler, Paul Dickopf was a member of the National Socialist German Students' League, Sturmabteilung and the Schutzstaffel before and during World War II.

[43] After being charged of corruption in January 2008, Jackie Selebi resigned as president of Interpol and was put on extended leave as National Police Commissioner of South Africa.

[46] On November 8, 2012, the 81st General Assembly closed with the election of Deputy Central Director of the French Judicial Police, Mireille Ballestrazzi, as the first female president of the organization.

[55] Four American senators had accused Vice President Alexander Prokopchuk of abusing Red Notices, likening his election to "putting a fox in charge of the henhouse".

[56] A statement posted by the Ukrainian Helsinki Human Rights Union and signed by other NGOs raised concerns about his ability to use his Interpol position to silence Russia's critics.

In June 2021, 35 French Parliamentarians, Members of Parliament and Senators, including from the majority and the opposition, urged President Emmanuel Macron to oppose the candidacy of the UAE's General Ahmed Nasser Al-Raisi, citing the accusations of torture against him.

He questioned how a profile like Al-Raisi's, who was responsible for the torture of political opponent Ahmed Mansoor and of a British academic Matthew Hedges, can become the president of a most respectable institution.

[61][62] Rodney Dixon, the British lawyer of Matthew Hedges and Ali Ahmad, submitted a complaint and urged the Swedish authorities to arrest Al-Raisi upon his arrival in Sweden.

The resolution of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe of 31 January 2014 criticizes the mechanisms of operation of the Commission for the Control of Interpol's files, in particular, non-adversarial procedures and unjust decisions.

[77] In May 2015, within the framework of the preparation of the report, the PACE Committee on Legal Affairs and Human Rights organized a hearing in Yerevan, during which both representatives of NGOs and Interpol had the opportunity to speak.

The countries accused of abusing the agency include China, Russia, United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Bahrain, Iran, Turkey, Kazakhstan, Belarus, Venezuela, and Tunisia.

[90] A number of persons who have been granted refugee status in the European Union (EU) and the US—including Russian businessman Andrey Borodin,[94] Chechen Arbi Bugaev,[95] Kazakh opposition politician Mukhtar Ablyazov[96] and his associate Artur Trofimov,[97] and Sri Lankan journalist Chandima Withana[98] —continue to remain on the public INTERPOL list.

Some of the refugees remain on the list even after courts have refused to extradite them to a non-democratic state (for example, Pavel Zabelin,[99] a witness in the case of Mikhail Khodorkovsky, and Alexandr Pavlov,[100] former security chief of the Kazakh oppositionist Ablyazov).

[citation needed] On 25 July 2014, despite Interpol's Constitution prohibiting them from undertaking any intervention or activities of a political or military nature,[103] the Ukrainian nationalist paramilitary leader Dmytro Yarosh was placed on Interpol's international wanted list at the request of Russian authorities,[104] which made him the only person wanted internationally after the beginning of the 2014 Russian military intervention in Ukraine.

For a long time, Interpol refused to place former President of Ukraine Viktor Yanukovych on the wanted list as a suspect by the new Ukrainian government for the mass killing of protesters during Euromaidan.

[107] However, on 16 July 2015, after an intervention of Joseph Hage Aaronson, the British law firm hired by Yanukovych, the international arrest warrant against the former president of Ukraine was suspended pending further review.

The report lists abuse cases where not only arrest warrants but also revocation of travel documents and passports were used by Turkey as persecution tools against critics and opponents.

[citation needed] After a senior UAE government official, Ahmed Naser Al-Raisi became the President, Interpol ignored an injunction by the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR), and cooperated with Serbian authorities to extradite a Bahraini activist.

For example, the Venezuelan journalist Patricia Poleo and a colleague of Kazakh activist Ablyazov, and Tatiana Paraskevich, who were granted refugee status, sought to overturn the politically motivated request for as long as one and a half years, and six months, respectively.

[118][119][120] Interpol has previously recognized some requests to include persons on the wanted list as politically motivated, e.g., Indonesian activist Benny Wenda, Georgian politician Givi Targamadze,[121] ex-president of Georgia Mikheil Saakashvili,[122] ex-mayor of Maracaibo and 2006 Venezuelan presidential election candidate Manuel Rosales and ex-president of Honduras Manuel Zelaya Rosales;[123] these persons have subsequently been removed.

The Working Group heard the recommendations of civil society as regards the reform of the international investigation system and promised to take them into account, in light of possible obstruction or refusal to file crime reports nationally.