Who will police Interpol?

MATTHEW HEDGESUAEUAEUAE, a British doctoral student, says he spent nearly seven months mostly in solitary confinement in a prison in the United Arab Emirates (). He tells of being drugged, interrogated, blindfolded and forced to stand all day in manacles. He falsely confessed to being a spy just to end the agony, he says. He was eventually pardoned and freed. To his horror, the man he accuses of complicity in his torture, Ahmed Naser al-Raisi, the inspector-general of the interior ministry at the time, who was in charge of prisons, was neither sacked nor demoted. The denies the claims and on November 25th Mr al-Raisi was elected Interpol’s new president.Interpol was set up to help countries’ police forces work together to catch crooks. It has an unfortunate habit of employing them instead. Jackie Selebi, its president from 2004 to 2008, was later sentenced to 15 years in jail for corruption in his native South Africa. Meng Hongwei, the boss from 2016 to 2018, was summoned back to China, disappeared, reappeared in the dock and got 13-and-a-half years for bribery. (His wife says he was framed.) A cynic might ask: whose side is Interpol on?