Samuel Osborne – The Independent
Interpol has rejected a Russian candidate for its president and instead elected a South Korean.
Kim Jong Yang beat Alexander Prokopchuk to the presidency and will serve a two-year term as head of the international police organisation.
Mr Prokopchuk, the former chief of Russia’s interior ministry, was reportedly favourite to take over the agency from China’s Meng Hongwei, who was recently detained over alleaged corruption.
Britain, the US and other European nations lobbied against his attempts to be elected, arguing his appointment would lead to further Russian abuses of Interpol’s “red notice” system to go after political opponents.
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Mr Prokopchuk is a general in the Russian interior ministry and serves as one of four vice presidents of the agency – the first Russian to hold such a senior post.
Mr Kim’s win means he secured at least two-thirds of votes cast at Interpol’s general assembly in Dubai on Wednesday.
He will serve until 2020, completing the four-year mandate of his predecessor, Mr Meng.
“Our world is now facing unprecedented changes which present huge challenges to public security and safety,” Mr Kim told told the assembly, according to the agency’s Twitter.
“To overcome them, we need a clear vision: we need to build a bridge to the future.”
South Korea’s president, Moon Jae-in, congratulated Mr Kim on becoming the first South Korean to head the organisation.
“We’re very proud. I, together with our people, am sending congratulations,” Mr Moon wrote on social media.
Britain’s foreign secretary, Jeremy Hunt, welcomed the result as “very important news for rule of law internationally”.
British financier Bill Browder, a long-standing critic of Mr Putin, celebrated the vote and vowed to continue his battle to get Russia suspended from the police network over its “serial abuse” of arrest notices.
He tweeted: “Interpol rejects Russian candidate as president. Instead votes to elect South Korean candidate. Reason prevails in this dark world.”
“Now, the clear next step is to suspend Russia from Interpol for its consistent and serial abuse of the red notice and diffusion system for political purposes. My legal team is preparing an initiative to use Interpol’s own rules to begin this process.”
Mr Kim, a police official in South Korea, was serving as interim president after Mr Meng’s departure from the post and was senior vice president at Interpol.
Based in the French city of Lyon, Interpol is best known for issuing red notices that identify a suspect pursued by another country, effectively putting them on the world’s “most wanted” list.
Human rights groups raised their concerns two years ago when Interpol’s general assembly approved Mr Meng as president. Amnesty International criticised “China’s longstanding practice of trying to use Interpol to arrest dissidents and refugees abroad”.
Several prominent Kremlin critics warned that electing Mr Prokopchuk – who has ties to Russia’s president, Vladimir Putin – would have undermined the international law enforcement agency and politicised police cooperation across borders.
Sir Vince Cable, leader of the Liberal Democrats, warned the Russian’s election would be “an absolute insult to the victims of the Salisbury attack”, while Marina Litvinenko, widow of poisoned dissident Alexander Litvinenko, had said Mr Putin’s critics in the UK would not feel safe if he won.
The White House came out on Tuesday against the election of Mr Prokopchuk, with National Security Council spokesman Garrett Marquis saying: “The Russian government abuses Interpol’s processes to harass its political opponents.” He said the US ”strongly endorses” Mr Kim.
The US secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, said Washington encourages all nations and organisations that are part of Interpol to choose a leader with credibility and integrity that reflects one of the world’s most critical law enforcement bodies.
“We believe Mr Kim will be just that,” he said.
Russia, however, secured a win for its ally Serbia on Tuesday, when Kosovo’s bid to join Interpol failed to garner enough votes at the Dubai assembly.
The move would have boosted Kosovo’s efforts at recognition of its statehood. Kosovo declared independence from Serbia in 2008.