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The UAE extradited three men to Belgium in June who were subject to Interpol Red Notices. Dubai advocate Mohammad Al Najjar works on the legal process between an international alert and a final extradition decision.
On 19 June 2026, the UAE confirmed the extradition of three individuals wanted by Belgian authorities on charges of money laundering, drug trafficking and links to transnational organised crime. The men were sought through Interpol Red Notices, and the joint statement issued after a call between UAE Justice Minister Abdullah Sultan bin Awad Al Nuaimi and his Belgian counterpart Annelies Verlinden confirms that the extraditions were carried out in accordance with rulings by the competent UAE courts and under the UAE-Belgium extradition treaty.
The announcement illustrates a distinction central to the cross-border work handled by Mohammad Al Najjar Advocates & Legal Consultants: a Red Notice may initiate a process, but it does not itself authorise extradition. UAE judicial rulings and the subsequent statutory approval process determine whether surrender can take place. The stages in between are where extradition matters are actually decided.
What a Red Notice Is, and What It Is Not
Interpol’s own definition is direct: a Red Notice is a request to law enforcement worldwide to locate and provisionally arrest a person pending extradition or similar legal action, and it is not an international arrest warrant. Each of Interpol’s 196 member countries applies its own law in deciding whether to arrest the person at all. A notice is issued at the request of a member state on the basis of that state’s domestic warrant, and both incoming requests and existing notices undergo compliance review within the organisation. What a Red Notice does not do is establish guilt or amount to a judicial determination of the underlying allegations.
The volume behind the system explains why the confusion is so common. Interpol published 15,548 Red Notices in 2024, a 27 percent rise on the previous year and the largest annual total on record, while the organisation’s 2024 annual report records 223,641 valid notices across all categories. The compliance mechanisms are active in both directions: Interpol’s Notices and Diffusions Task Force refused or cancelled 2,462 notices and diffusions in 2024 for non-compliance with its legal framework, a 54 percent increase on the year, and the Commission for the Control of Interpol’s Files, the body in Lyon that reviews requests from named individuals, processed 2,411 cases over the same period. Individuals can ask the Commission to access, correct or delete information held in Interpol’s files, while extradition proceedings are contested separately under the domestic law of the country concerned.
The Process the Notice Triggers in the UAE
For a person located in the UAE, the notice is only the opening step. Extradition is governed by Federal Law No. 39 of 2006 on International Judicial Cooperation in Criminal Matters, whose updated text is published on the UAE legislation portal. The statute sets conditions the requesting state must satisfy regardless of what the alert says. The offence must be punishable by at least one year’s imprisonment in both the requesting country and the UAE, the dual criminality rule, and where the person has already been convicted abroad, at least six months of the sentence must remain to be served. The law bars extradition in defined circumstances, including where the person is a UAE national, where the offence is political or connected to a political offence, where UAE courts have already passed final judgment on the same matter, and where the case is time-barred.
Procedure adds further stages, each set out in the same statute: the request is examined through the Public Prosecution and the courts, an extradition decision may be implemented only once it is no longer subject to appeal, and a decision granting extradition is enforced only after the Minister’s approval. Each stage is a defined checkpoint at which the request must satisfy the law, which is why a case that results in extradition has undergone substantially more scrutiny than the alert that initiated the process.
The firm’s published guidance also acknowledges the practical weight a notice carries in the meantime. A named individual may face detention or travel disruption when crossing borders, depending on the law and practice of the country concerned, and may face banking restrictions or enhanced compliance scrutiny before any court examines the merits. The distinction between notice and warrant is a legal reality, not a shield.
Mohammad Al Najjar Advocates lists Interpol-related and cross-border criminal matters among its core practice areas, alongside criminal defence, cybercrime and defamation work. According to the firm’s published information, its team provides assistance in eight languages, and it publishes multilingual guidance explaining Red Notices, extradition procedures and the options available to named individuals.
A Red Notice can lead to extradition, but it is not the legal decision that authorises it. The judicial and statutory stages between the initial alert and final surrender are where the substantive work of extradition defence takes place.
