LONDON: The request of Pakistani government to issue the red arrest warrant notice against former Finance Minister Ishaq Dar has been refused by the International Criminal Police Organisation (INTERPOL).
A Red Notice is a request to locate and provisionally arrest individual pending extradition. It is issued by the General Secretariat at the request of a member country or an international tribunal based on a valid national arrest warrant.
The INTERPOL General Secretariat informed all Interpol National Central Bureaus (NCBs) to delete all data files in their systems on Ishaq Dar that issued him a clean certificate that he was not subject to an Interpol red notice.
The sources from the INTERPOL confirmed that the Pakistan government through the Federal Interior Ministry had requested them to issue a red arrest warrant for Dar, who now lives in London, but the state’s request was later rejected.
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Earlier Ishaq Dar provided evidence to INTERPOL that his name was neither in Panama Leaks nor in Supreme Court judgment of 20th April 2017.
He told the authorities that he never missed filing of any tax return in 34 years ended on 30th June 2017.
The decision to delete Dar’s files was taken during the 109th session of the Commission for the Control of INTERPOL’s files.
One of the official papers issued by the INTERPOL stated, “After a thorough examination of the elements before it, the Commission found that the data challenged raised questions as to compliance with applicable rules.”
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As a result, it considered that the retention of these data in the INTERPOL Information System was not compliant with INTERPOL’s rules and decided that they should be deleted.
The former finance minister left for London in November 2017 to seek medical treatment and has not returned ever since. In June 2019, he applied for political asylum in the United Kingdom.
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