Rhys Davies featured in Parliamentary Joint Committee on Human Rights Report, Transnational Repression in the UK

30/07/2025

Parliament’s Joint Committee on Human Rights has published its report on “Transnational Repression in the UK” this week, addressing the abuse of INTERPOL’s Red Notice system following expert evidence from Rhys Davies of Temple Garden Chambers.

The Seventh Report of Session 2024–25 is a Joint Committee report with recommendations to government, which now has two months to respond to the findings and proposals.

The report examines how authoritarian states use transnational repression tactics to target critics beyond their borders, with INTERPOL abuse identified as a key concern. The committee extensively considered the evidence given by Rhys Davies of Temple Garden Chambers and Ben Keith of 5 St Andrew’s Hill, incorporating their analysis and recommendations throughout its findings on how politically motivated Red Notices are undermining the system’s integrity.

In his evidence to the committee, Rhys Davies described Red Notices as “the sniper rifle of autocrats… long-distance, targeted, and highly effective.”

The report details how politically motivated Red Notices can severely restrict victims’ lives. As Rhys explained: “You will be in constant fear that, if you were to go on holiday to Spain, an overzealous passport control officer might think they have an international super-criminal… and will detain you. There is no aspect of your life that this will not touch upon.”

The committee adopted key recommendations from advanced by both barristers, calling for the Government to work with ‘Five Eyes’ partners to “track and expose malicious, vexatious, and politically motivated use of Red Notices” and push for “corrective measures and suspensions for systematic abusers of INTERPOL mechanisms.”

A copy of the report can be found here:

https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/jt5901/jtselect/jtrights/681/report.html