“The Foreign Ministry iterates that the Kurdistan Region of Iraq’s extradition of suspect Ali Bashar to Germany authorities is a legal violation due to lack of an extradition treaty between both countries,” ministry spokesperson Ahmed Mahjoub said in a statement on Wednesday.
Baghdad considers this a violation on the side of those who extradited Ali Bashar, as the exchange and extradition of wanted individuals is “a sovereign authority in the specialty of the federal Ministry of Justice.”
Bashar was detained by police in Duhok on Friday after Germany’s interior ministry contacted the KRG’s Ministry of Interior.
The spokesperson says that they do want justice, but within the context of law and the constitution that doesn’t “violate national sovereignty.”
The Kurdistan Region is a semi-autonomous region in Iraq. Its government cooperates with Interpol, while Erbil and Berlin have good diplomatic, business, and military relations which have been strengthened in the post-Saddam era.
Bashar is the primary suspect in the killing of Susanna Maria Feldman, 14, of Wiesbaden Germany. Germany’s Central Council of Jews said Feldman was a member of the Jewish community in nearby Wiesbaden. The council also warned against “premature conclusions.”
The Iraqi Consulate General in Frankfurt was given evidence and documents, Germany’s Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung reported on Tuesday.
The newspaper added that the case will be conducted in adult criminal court after German authorities learned Bashar was already 21 when the alleged crime was committed. They reported Bashar had falsified his age on asylum documents, as well as his name — switching his first and last names.
Charges have not been announced by the prosecutor, but Germany has strict hate laws which could lead to aggravated charges.
Local German prosecutor Achim Thoma has said the cause of death was strangulation.
Bashar convinced his family to return to the Kurdistan Region on June 2. His family denies they were complicit. The family has not been charged.
"We have no evidence that the police did not behave properly," said state prosecutor Christina Graef on Tuesday in Wiesbaden, according to the German newspaper.
Duhok police chief Tariq Ahmed told Rudaw the accused, while in custody, “confessed to the crime of killing a 14 year-old German girl after he raped the girl.”
Bashar had been living in a center for refugees with relatives in the same city near Frankfurt.
AFP reported he arrived in Germany in 2015 with his parents and five siblings. The agency added his asylum request was rejected in December 2016, but he obtained temporary residency pending his appeal.
Immigration and asylum have become highly politicized issues in Germany. Last week, pro- and anti-immigration protests were held simultaneously in the capital.
In Germany, asylum seeking peaked at 890,000 in 2015. It dropped to 280,000 in 2016, and 186,644 in 2017 — due in part to a deal between the European Union and Turkey for the latter to provide shelter to refugees in exchange for billions of euros.
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