Did the United Kingdom and France issue a "Secret International Arrest Warrant" for Elon Musk? No, that's not true: No news organizations reported anything about the supposedly existing "secret" arrest warrant for Musk approved within jurisdictions of the U.K. or France. The International Criminal Court that issues international arrest warrants denied there is one for the owner of the X platform. Interpol told Lead Stories that it doesn't issue international arrest warrants. The office of the French prosecutor, working on a case that gained public attention after the arrest of another tech entrepreneur, Telegram CEO Pavel Durov, told Lead Stories on August 28, 2024, that the investigation is only about Telegram.
The claim appeared in a post (archived here) on X, formerly known as Twitter, on August 25, 2024. It said:
🚨🚨🚨Update: UK and France issues Secret International Arrest Warrant for US businessman Elon Musk! United Kingdom threatens to arrest Elon Musk and other US citizens for social media posts! New Dark Ages falls upon Europe!! 🔥🔥🔥
This is what the post looked like on X at the time of writing:
(Source: X screenshot taken on Mon Aug 26 17:19:28 2024 UTC)
The post did not include any attribution to substantiate the claim, nor did cite any official sources. Furthermore, the wording raised additional questions about whether what it described could have been possible from a procedural point of view.
The International Criminal Court
The institution that may potentially issue international arrest warrants is the International Criminal Court (ICC), and it is not France's or the U.K.'s judicial body.
But, as of this writing, the ICC's arrest warrant database (archived here) did not include Musk's name.
The ICC, established under a treaty known as the Rome Statute (archived here), can issue international arrest warrants publicly or confidentially.
On August 28, 2024, the ICC's Public Affairs Unit told Lead Stories via email:
... The information regarding possible warrants for Elon Musk is not correct.
In an initial emailed response received by Lead Stories on August 27, 2024, the ICC emphasized that the matters it deals with do not include "social media posts":
The Court may only address the crimes of genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes and the crime of aggression ...
Interpol
The International Criminal Police Organization (archived here), better known as Interpol, is potentially another body that could be aware of or involved in situations requiring an arrest of a suspect outside the country that issued an arrest warrant.
However, it does not issue international arrest warrants. Had France or the U.K. approved a national warrant for Musk's arrest and requested international cooperation, the Interpol alert would be a "red notice" (archived here).
In a statement received by Lead Stories via email on August 28, 2024, Interpol said:
A Red Notice is not an international arrest warrant.
A Red Notice could only be requested on the basis of a valid national arrest warrant, and if the request is in compliance with our Constitution and rules.
It added:
INTERPOL is not informed about every national arrest warrant issued by every country.
The U.K. and France
Lead Stories found no evidence suggesting that, as of August 28, 2024, France or the U.K. had an active arrest warrant for Musk.
Had such a warrant existed, was secret and somehow got leaked to the press, it would have been discussed by major media outlets. But, as of this writing, searches on Google News for the keywords seen here (archived here) and here (archived here) produced no results.
A broad Google search for the exact wording from the post on X (archived here) led only to duplicates of the claim.
The post that is the focus of this fact check appeared to have been combined from the most searched keywords from different news stories surrounding the time of its publication.
On August 12, 2024, Bruce Daisley, a former Twitter vice president for Europe, wrote an opinion piece (archived here) in the British newspaper The Guardian, suggesting that in light of the proliferation of false claims fueling (archived here) anti-immigrant riots in the U.K. (archived here), Musk should be faced with a risk of personal sanctions -- namely, a probability of an arrest resulting from issuing of a valid warrant.
On August 24, 2024, local time, Pavel Durov -- the Russian-born Telegram CEO and tech billionaire with citizenship in France and several other countries (archived here) -- was detained (archived here) at Le Bourget airport outside Paris (archived here).
Some public figures started speculating about other hypothetical arrest warrants in the aftermath. One such post (archived here) published by Nigel Farage, the leader of the Reform U.K. party, specifically mentioned Musk. However, even Farage did not allege that an arrest warrant for X's owner had already been approved anywhere in the world.
On August 26, 2024, the office of the prosecutor investigating the case that led to Durov's arrest in France issued a press release (archived here) outlining the nature of the inquiry. It did not mention Musk.
On August 28, 2024, in response to questions about the alleged arrest warrant for Musk, a spokesperson for the French prosecutor's office emailed Lead Stories a new press release issued that day. Written in French, it only discussed Durov and Telegram -- and made no mentions of Musk or X/Twitter.
When asked if the prosecutor's office can confirm that there is no arrest warrant for Musk, the spokesperson replied via email on the same day:
...cette enquête concerne uniquement Telegram.
As translated by Google Translate, that reads:
... this investigation concerns Telegram only.
Lead Stories contacted the embassies of France and the U.K. in the U.S. for additional comments but did not receive a response.
No comments from Musk
As of this writing, Musk had made no statements on the matter. A Google search for the term "warrant" (archived here) across his account on X produced a single irrelevant result from April 2024:
(Source: Google screenshot taken on Mon Aug 26 00:08:50 2024 UTC)
An automatic response (archived here) from the still-active press email of the X platform did not contain any statements mentioning arrest warrants:
(Source: Gmail screenshot taken on Mon Aug 26 00:14:46 2024 UTC)
Lead Stories additionally contacted Tesla where Musk is the CEO, but had not received a response by the time of writing. The news section on the company's website said nothing about purported arrest warrants (archived here). According to its investor relations website, Tesla had issued no press releases about it (archived here).
Besides English, the claim proliferated in other languages such as German (archived here) and Japanese (archived here) in identical wording, which suggested, in turn, that it was a sign of a coordinated campaign.
Other Lead Stories fact checks about technology can be found here. International stories are here.
