Interpol’s governing body gathers this week to choose a new president, one that Western governments hope will block authoritarian states from using the global law enforcement agency to pursue political dissidents across borders.

The election will seat Interpol’s first full-term president since the last incumbent, senior Chinese security official Meng Hongwei, vanished during a 2018 trip home. Mr. Meng later appeared in court and was sentenced to 13 years imprisonment on bribery charges that his wife says were concocted by...

Interpol’s governing body gathers this week to choose a new president, one that Western governments hope will block authoritarian states from using the global law enforcement agency to pursue political dissidents across borders.

The election will seat Interpol’s first full-term president since the last incumbent, senior Chinese security official Meng Hongwei, vanished during a 2018 trip home. Mr. Meng later appeared in court and was sentenced to 13 years imprisonment on bribery charges that his wife says were concocted by his political rivals in Beijing.

At stake is whether Interpol—the central node for police departments around the world—can sustain a yearslong effort to weed out fugitive alerts known as red notices issued against dissidents that countries such as China, Russia and Turkey, where the election is being held, consider legitimate targets.

China wants Police Counselor Hu Binchen, at left at a 2015 event in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, on Interpol’s executive committee.

Photo: Sovannara/Zuma Press

Beijing is trying to place one of Mr. Meng’s former subordinates, Police Counselor Hu Binchen, on Interpol’s executive committee. That 13-member panel exerts oversight over Secretary-General Jürgen Stock, a German civil servant under Western pressure to block autocratic governments, including China, from misusing the red-notice system. Twelve of the committee’s seats, including the president’s, will be filled this week.

It isn’t clear whether Washington and its allies have managed to find a presidential contender who can win the required two-thirds vote on Thursday. The U.S. currently has no seats on the executive committee, hasn’t held the presidency since 1988, and is considering legislation introduced in the Senate in May that would limit the ability of police to act on the basis of red notices alone.

Even if the U.S. and its supporters succeed in installing a candidate, the presidency—unpaid and largely ceremonial—exerts only so much influence at the 98-year-old institution, wielding a vote equal to that of other members on the executive committee.

Interpol Secretary-General Jürgen Stock, in Istanbul on Tuesday, has faced pressure to block autocratic governments from misusing the red-notice system.

Photo: Francisco Seco/Associated Press

Whoever wins, the broader trend of autocratic governments attempting to use the agency to further their own political goals is likely to continue, said officials and analysts closely following Interpol.

“It’s not about the person who is in charge, it’s more about the system,” said Giulio Calcara, a lecturer in international criminal law at the University of Easter Finland. “Interpol is a system that requires the good faith of its participants.”

Presidential candidates include Czech Police Colonel Šárka Havránková, an Interpol vice president. Another nominee, Ahmed Naser al-Raisi of the United Arab Emirates, has campaigned for the office, saying he can modernize Interpol by bringing in his autocratic government’s experience maintaining surveillance technology.

A spokesperson for the U.A.E. foreign ministry said Gen. al-Raisi has modernized U.A.E. policing and commented broadly on the need to modernize Interpol’s technical capabilities to deal with a range of new threats from crypto fraud to counterfeit vaccines. “He strongly believes that the abuse or mistreatment of people by police is abhorrent and intolerable,” the spokesperson said.

Governments are also electing a new Commission for the Control of Interpol’s Files, a seven-member panel responsible for ensuring Interpol complies with the human-rights commitments laid out in its constitution.

Šárka Havránková, a candidate for the Interpol presidency, attended the organization’s meeting in Istanbul on Tuesday.

Photo: ozan kose/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images

“No individual member of the Executive Committee, including the president, has any involvement or influence in the decision making process to publish or cancel a Red Notice,” a statement from Interpol said. “As a global law enforcement organization, Interpol provides a neutral platform for police to work directly with their counterparts, even between countries which do not have diplomatic relations.”

Mr. Hu, the Chinese official seeking a post on the executive committee, worked closely for 20 years with Mr. Meng, the former president now imprisoned in China, said his wife, Grace Meng.

Mr. Hu would take the job under the ever-present threat of being jailed if he runs afoul of China’s central leadership, she added.

“I am very worried about the future of Interpol,” she said.

Interpol doesn’t investigate or prosecute crimes. Its total annual budget—136 million euros, equivalent to $153 million—is slightly less than that of Florida’s Orlando Police Department. Instead, its most important job is maintaining a database that notifies countries around the world if a fugitive is wanted. Within minutes of receiving the name of a person wanted in one country, national police in another can pursue the suspect.

At present, about 66,370 such red notices are active.

Most alert requests are based on legitimate and often serious or violent crimes. But as much as 5% are rejected, Mr. Stock, the secretary-general, has said, because they fall short of Interpol’s requirements or are aimed at political targets. Red-notice requests often contain very little information beyond a name and a description of the crime, sometimes little more than a single word.

When a dissident named on a red notice crosses a border or gets involved in a routine legal matter, police can act fast. In September, police in Poland detained Belarusian activist Makary Malachowski, a mix-up that the Polish government—normally antagonistic toward Belarus—attributed to misuse of Interpol’s red-notice system.

NBA player Enes Kanter, now with the Boston Celtics, remained in New York in January 2019 as his Knicks played in London, because of a red-notice request by Turkey.

Photo: CAITLIN OCHS/REUTERS

Banks can decline to transact with red-noticed individuals, embassies frequently look at the notices when considering visas, and government critics—from ordinary citizens to celebrities—are forced to take them into account when traveling. In 2019, NBA star Enes Kanter, a vocal critic of Turkey’s government, called off appearances in Toronto and London after the Turkish government requested a red notice to be issued against him.

Since Mr. Stock took office in 2014, the agency has created what it calls a specialized task force directed to review every red-notice request as it comes in. If a request doesn’t comply, it is refused, Interpol says. But that task force has no privileged access to the strength of evidence against each fugitive, and disentangling complex crimes—especially corruption-related offenses—from politically motivated charges can be onerous.

“It’s not working, and it needs a fundamental overhaul,” said Toby Cadman, a barrister and international law specialist who has represented more than 100 clients seeking to have red notices against them overturned or disregarded. “It’s quite opaque with very few oversight mechanisms and over a number of years we’ve seen warrants being issued against activists, political opponents….We generally get those warrants removed, but the damage is done, unfortunately.”

In Washington, eight senators—four Democrats and four Republicans—introduced a bill in May that would require additional checks before U.S. police act on Interpol notices. It would also have the U.S. “use the voice, vote and influence of the United States, as appropriate, within Interpol’s General Assembly and Executive Committee to promote” increased screening of red notices.

Write to Drew Hinshaw at drew.hinshaw@wsj.com