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The German Federal Constitutional Court and the Extradition of Alledged Terrorists to the United States

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  06 March 2019

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In January 2003, two Yemeni citizens were arrested by German police forces at the airport of Frankfurt. The arrest took place pursuant to the request of an American judge of the United States District Court for the Eastern District of New York. The action was considered to be a blow against international terrorism and should have demonstrated the functioning of the German-American cooperation in the war against this scourge. However, due to general considerations as well as the concrete circumstances of the case, the extradition of the two persons took more time than would be expected from a smoothly running cooperation. All legal remedies were exhausted in the Yemenis’ efforts to avoid extradition to the United States, and even now, an individual complaint has been brought before the European Court on Human Rights in Strasbourg. The two Yemeni citizens were finally extradited more than ten months after their arrest in November 2003.

Type
Public Law
Copyright
Copyright © 2004 by German Law Journal GbR 

References

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70 The first decision – in the Motadasseq case, in which the accused was convicted to imprisonment of 15 years -now is pending before the Federal Supreme Court and according to the reports about this trial the federal judges are very reluctant if the evidences at the disposal of the ordinary court could justify a conviction. In the second case – the Mzoudi-case – the court removed the arrest warrant when it got the information that un unknown witness – the court presumes that it was Binalshib who is in U.S. detention – declared that Mzoudi was not involved in the preparation of the attack on the World Trade Center. On February 5, 2004 Mzoudi was acquitted by the Higher Regional Court of Hamburg for lack of evidence according to the principle in dubio pro reo.Google Scholar