(TibetanReview.net, Aug24’21) – In a rebuff to the Chinese government, Interpol has cancelled a red notice for a Uyghur man sought by it after the international police body conducted a review, as accusations mounted that it was being used to repatriate dissidents to China, reported the scmp.com Aug 24.
The red notice had led Moroccan authorities to detain Yidiresi Aishan, a 33-year-old Uyghur Muslim from Xinjiang. Also known as Idris Hasan, he was taken into custody after arriving in Casablanca on Jul 19 from Turkey, where he has lived since 2012.
“The Interpol general secretariat has cancelled the red notice for Yidiresi Aishan and informed all 194 member countries,” the report quoted an Interpol statement as saying on Aug 23.
“The decision was made following a review of the notice after new information was brought to the attention of the general secretariat.”
The report said an Interpol spokesman declined to provide more information on why the notice was cancelled.
The report said the Moroccan prosecutor had started the extradition process for Aishan, holding the first hearing on Aug 12. But China did not provide evidence to the court to support its request, Aishan’s wife Zeynure has said.
Zeynure, who is in Turkey with their three children, has said a second hearing had been set for Aug 26 to give more time for the Chinese authorities to present evidence. She hopes the withdrawal of the red notice would help Aishan in the case.
“They called my husband a terrorist but didn’t have any proof,” she has said.
Aishan, a software engineer, was said to have been active in the Uyghur diaspora community in Turkey, helping to publish newsletters that shared resources for resettlement.
China has been accused of misusing the Interpol red notice system to harass and attempt to repatriate overseas Uygur dissidents, often claiming they were involved in terrorism.
Earlier, Dolkun Isa, the president of the World Uyghur Congress and a naturalized German citizen since 2006, had a red notice against him for his arrest for 20 years until 2018, during which he was detained or threatened with extradition to China in at least five countries that he travelled to, including the United States, South Korea and Italy, the report noted.
Isa has said he found out about the red notice in 1999 from the German police, who told him that Chinese authorities had accused him of murder in 1996 – a bogus charge given that he had left China and fled to Turkey in 1994.
