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A Czech court said on Monday it had decided to extradite a German neo-Nazi provocateur accused of abusing Germany’s gender laws to serve a sentence in a women’s prison.<\/p>\n
Marla-Svenja Liebich — who used to go by the name of Sven before controversially registering a new identity as a woman — was detained under a European arrest warrant in western Czech Republic in early April and put in pre-trial custody.<\/p>\n
Liebich, a high-profile figure in eastern Germany’s right-wing extremist scene for decades, disappeared last August after failing to show up at a women’s prison in Germany to serve a sentence for offences including incitement to racial hatred and slander.<\/p>\n
“The court issued a verdict handing the requested person over to German authorities,” Jakub Stverak, spokesman for the regional court in the western Czech city of Plzen, told AFP.<\/p>\n
He said Liebich now had three days to appeal the verdict.<\/p>\n
“If the appeal is not filed… (Liebich) will be handed over to Germany within 10 days after the verdict has taken effect,” Stverak said.<\/p>\n
The Plzen court had already dealt with the case in May but adjourned it until Monday for the judge to study Liebich’s testimony.<\/p>\n
In late 2024, Liebich registered as a woman, following a reform that made it easier for people to change their legal gender.<\/p>\n
The move meant Liebich would have been sent to a women’s prison, sparking a debate in Germany over abuses of the new law.<\/p>\n
However, Liebich vanished without ever serving the 18-month sentence.<\/p>\n
Liebich’s gender transition was widely seen as intended to mock Germany’s Self-Determination Act, introduced in November 2024 under the then centre-left government of chancellor Olaf Scholz.<\/p>\n
In 2022, Liebich disrupted an LGBTQ pride parade in the German city of Halle, calling the participants “parasites on society”, according to activists.<\/p>\n
The current government of Chancellor Friedrich Merz, led by the conservative CDU\/CSU alliance, said after coming to office last year that it would review the Self-Determination Act.<\/p>\n
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