preliminary decision of the General Prosecutor's Office

In extradition proceedings on the basis of a European arrest warrant, the Public Prosecutor's Office must decide in advance whether it intends to assert obstacles to the granting of a permit (§ 79.2 sentence 1 and 2 IRG). When it comes to the extradition of German nationals, the decision not to assert any obstacles to the granting of a licence requires a considerable amount of reasoning.

extradition of German nationals, our experience ...

While in our case from March 2016 concerning the extradition of a German national (- (4) 151 AuslA 218/15 (10/16) -) the Berlin Higher Regional Court still made very low demands on the necessary preliminary ruling of the General Prosecutor's Office, the situation now looks quite different in the case of an requested extradition of a German national to Malta (Kammergericht Berlin, B. v. 09.07.2018 – (4) 151 AuslA 206/17 (1/18). This time - according to the Berlin Higher Regional Court - the decision of the Berlin Public Prosecutor's Office really proves to be flawed in the important points.

Thus, the German nationality of the persecuted person had not been sufficiently taken into account and the places of residence, crime scenes and focal points of the offence, the interests of the injured person and his nationality, the public interest of the participating states in prosecution in the respective state, the state of affairs of the criminal proceedings in the competing states, the interest of the participating judicial authorities in an effective division of labour in criminal prosecution and the availability of evidence in Germany had to be taken into account.