We didn’t know how close we came to having the Kremlin in charge of the world police force against international crime until we saw protests from U.S. Cory Gardner about the move.
We’re not sure how Interpol’s general assembly decided the Russian candidate was even a viable option. Luckily, they saw the potential for widespread abuse, came to their senses, and elected a candidate from South Korea instead.
Gardner and other members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee issued a statement prior to the election laying out a fairly strong argument against Russia.
“The Kremlin has ordered and executed extrajudicial killings abroad and has used chemical weapons on the soil of a NATO ally. To allow a tool of Vladimir Putin to run Interpol would undermine international law and invite further Russian abuses”
The senator’s statement was included in a BBC article about the opposition that led to Alexander Prokopchuk’s defeat.
Gardner’s had Russia in his crosshairs for some time, authoring legislation to name the country a state sponsor of terrorism.
Last time we checked, terrorism was a heinous crime that does not look well on a country’s application to control the arrest warrant system of the freaking world.