After three months of proceedings, the Frankfurt/Main Attorney General's Office has refused to extradite a U.S. citizen to the Sultanate of Oman and ordered his release. The prosecuted was arrested during a transit at Frankfurt Airport when a Red Notice from the Sultanate of Oman appeared in the INTERPOL database.

From the outset, we strongly opposed extradition to the Sultanate and showed that he would not be able to expect humane conditions of detention and a fair trial in the Sultanate of Oman if he were extradited.

no extradition to Sultanate of Oman

There are numerous references to inhumane detention conditions and violations of the fair trial principle in the Sultanate of Oman in publications and the U.S. Department of State has supported us with a report, according to which the judiciary in Oman makes many exceptions to its own legal procedural rules and then violations of Article 6 ECHR are obvious.

Under Art. 6 ECHR, every person, and in particular every person charged under Art. 6 III ECHR, has at least the following rights:

- To be informed in as short a time as possible, in a language which he or she understands, in full detail of the nature and cause of the accusation against him or her;

- to have sufficient time and opportunity to prepare his or her defense;

- To defend herself, to be defended by counsel of her own choosing, or, if she lacks the means to pay for it, to have the assistance of counsel free of charge when the interests of justice so require;

- To ask or have questions asked of prosecution witnesses and to obtain the summoning and examination of exculpatory witnesses under the same conditions as apply to prosecution witnesses;

- to receive free assistance from an interpreter if he or she does not understand or speak the language of the court hearing.

Compliance with Article 6 III ECHR does not appear to be guaranteed in the Sultanate of Oman in the case of extradition. No current information is available on the conditions in prisons and detention centers, so the risk of treatment contrary to human rights cannot be ruled out.

According to the established case law of the Federal Constitutional Court (see BVerfG decision of April 8, 2004 - 2 BvR 253/04, with further references), the German courts, when examining the admissibility of extradition on constitutional grounds, are required to examine whether the extradition and the acts on which it is based are compatible with the minimum standard of international law binding in the Federal Republic of Germany under Article 25 of the Basic Law and with the indispensable constitutional principles of its public order.