Neo-Nazi provocateur extradited from Czech Republic to Germany

A neo-Nazi provocateur has been extradited from the Czech Republic to Germany and sent to a women’s prison, despite being suspected of abusing German gender self-identification laws.

Marla-Svenja Liebich — who used to go by the name of Sven before registering a new identity as a woman — was transferred to a women’s prison in the eastern city of Chemnitz, Benedikt Bernzen from the local prosecutors’ office told AFP.

Liebich had been “co-operative,” Bernzen says, adding that the management of the prison was now “considering how to implement the sentence”.

Liebich, 55, has been a high-profile figure in eastern Germany’s right-wing extremist scene for decades.

Liebich disappeared last August after failing to show up at a women’s prison in Germany to serve a sentence of one and a half years for offenses including incitement to racial hatred and slander.

In early April, Liebich was arrested in the western Czech Republic under a European arrest warrant.

The Czech courts threw out Liebich’s attempts to stop the extradition.

In late 2024, Liebich registered as a woman, following a reform that made it easier for people to change their legal gender.

The move was widely seen as intended to mock Germany’s Self-Determination Act, introduced in November 2024, and sparked debate over the potential for the new law’s abuse.

In 2022, Liebich disrupted an LGBTQ pride parade in the German city of Halle, calling the participants “parasites on society,” according to activists.

After coming to office last year, Germany’s current government of conservative Chancellor Friedrich Merz said that it would review the Self-Determination Act.