Can your own country trap you by cancelling your passport?

The database

The SLTD holds around 138 million records; in 2023 it was searched 3.6 billion times, with 232,423 hits. Border officers query it through the I-24/7 network; airlines and banks screen through I-Checkit, which checks a customer’s document against the SLTD and “travel and identity documents associated with INTERPOL Notices (Red Notices only)”, alerting the General Secretariat and the bureaus concerned on any match. Built to stop criminals travelling on stolen papers, it works equally on a valid passport its issuer calls invalid.

How it is misused

Freedom House told a US congressional commission in 2021 that INTERPOL’s channels “can also be used to falsely report passports as lost or stolen”, leaving exiles grounded or detained. The best-documented case is Turkey. A June 2023 open letter to INTERPOL’s Secretary General from the Arrested Lawyers Initiative and co-signatories described dissidents’ passports recorded as lost, stolen or revoked to force their return, noted that Turkey’s Constitutional Court has repeatedly found such revocations unlawful, and asked for a review mechanism for the SLTD like the one for notices and, Statewatch reported, for Turkey’s suspension from the database. A 2026 handbook for democracies puts it plainly: a state “can also add a valid document” to the SLTD, “effectively rendering it invalid”, so the holder is refused entry where he lives.

What the rules say

An SLTD record is data in INTERPOL’s system, governed by the same rules as a Red Notice. Article 11 requires processing authorised under the law applicable to the recording bureau; Article 12 requires data “accurate, relevant, not excessive in relation to their purpose and up to date”; Article 5(5) makes the source answer for the consequences. A passport cancelled without the legal basis its own courts demand fails that test. Unlike notices, SLTD records are not screened by the Notices and Diffusions Task Force before going live — hence the letter’s request.

What you can do

The Commission’s competence covers all data in the system (Statute Article 3(1)(c)), and it already does: in 2024, twelve per cent of the data behind requests from people in INTERPOL’s files were other categories “such as data on stolen vehicles or on lost or stolen travel documents”. An access request shows whether your document is recorded; a deletion request then argues unlawfulness and inaccuracy, your own courts’ rulings as exhibits. Article 63 obliges an officer about to act on the record to check with the source that it is still accurate — worth demanding in writing before a border refuses you.

Related

• Can my bank or employer see my Red Notice?
• Can you travel with a Red Notice?
• How do I find out if I have a Red Notice?