Does Interpol operate in Dubai?

Yes, Interpol has an active presence in Dubai. The National Central Bureau of Interpol for the UAE is located in Abu Dhabi, under the Ministry of Interior. This bureau is responsible for executing Interpol notices and coordinating international investigations. Dubai authorities utilize the Interpol system to apprehend individuals on international wanted lists, including those with Red Notices issued against them. However, the final decision regarding detention and extradition rests with local authorities and the judiciary.

Interpol itself has no agents stationed in Dubai and no independent authority to make arrests on UAE soil; its role is limited to facilitating the exchange of information between the National Central Bureau in Abu Dhabi and other member countries’ police forces. Dubai Police maintains its own International Criminal Investigation Department, which liaises directly with the federal bureau on notices affecting individuals within the emirate, but any operational action — arrest, search, or handover — is carried out exclusively by Dubai’s own law enforcement personnel under domestic legal authority.

Once the federal National Central Bureau receives and validates a notice, the relevant details are shared with the emirate-level police forces likely to encounter the individual, given Dubai’s volume of international air traffic and its role as a regional business hub. This coordination extends to land border crossings and seaports as well, but Dubai’s airport remains the most common point where an international notice results in an actual encounter, given the scale of passenger flow through DXB compared to other entry points in the country.

Interpol’s presence in the UAE should not be confused with a standing investigative capacity: the organization does not conduct surveillance, run informants, or open cases on its own initiative within Dubai. Every notice acted upon locally originates from a request submitted by another member state’s judicial or police authority, and it is the UAE’s own Public Prosecution that determines whether the domestic legal threshold for provisional arrest has been met, independently of how the notice was framed by the requesting country.

Because enforcement decisions rest entirely with UAE authorities rather than with Interpol, any challenge to a detention or pending extradition in Dubai must be directed at the Public Prosecution and the local courts, not at Interpol itself. A parallel challenge to the underlying notice can still be pursued through the Commission for the Control of Interpol’s Files, but that process addresses the notice at its international source and runs separately from whatever domestic proceedings are already underway in the UAE.