Extradition from Germany to Iran: defending against a Red Notice

Germany has no extradition treaty with Iran. That single fact shapes everything that follows – and it is where the defence begins, not where it ends.

An INTERPOL Red Notice issued at Iran's request is a signal to locate and provisionally detain a person with a view to extradition. It is not an arrest warrant and not a judicial decision. In Germany, extradition to a non-treaty state is governed by the domestic extradition law of the requested state, not by any bilateral instrument. That means German courts apply their own constitutional and statutory criteria, and human-rights obligations weigh heavily at every stage.

As of mid-2025, Iran continues to use INTERPOL's notice system alongside direct bilateral requests. This page sets out the treaty position, the grounds that carry weight in German proceedings, how the Red Notice interacts with the extradition process, and the realistic prospects for each line of defence.

What is the treaty position between Germany and Iran?

Germany and Iran have no extradition treaty in force. In the absence of a treaty, any extradition request from Iran must be assessed purely under German national extradition law and constitutional obligations. German courts do not apply a bilateral instrument; they apply their own domestic rules, which give the courts and ultimately the Federal Government a wide discretion to refuse surrender.

That discretion is not unlimited. Germany is bound by the European Convention on Human Rights, by its own Basic Law, and by the general principles of public international law. A request from a state whose judicial system does not meet those standards faces significant obstacles from the outset. In our practice before German courts and at the CCF, we treat the absence of a treaty as an immediate structural defence – not the end of the analysis, but a powerful opening argument.

Iran's legal system has been the subject of sustained findings by international human-rights bodies. Those findings inform the human-rights analysis directly. The burden on the requesting state to satisfy German courts that surrender is compatible with fundamental rights is, in practice, a very high one.

How does a Red Notice issued at Iran's request work in Germany?

A Red Notice circulated at Iran's request is a request transmitted through INTERPOL's General Secretariat to all member states – including Germany – to locate and provisionally detain the subject with a view to extradition. It does not oblige Germany to arrest anyone; each state acts under its own law. But in practice, German border authorities and federal police treat an active Red Notice as grounds for a provisional arrest check.

The notice and the extradition request are legally separate instruments. A Red Notice may be live without any formal extradition request having been submitted to Germany. Equally, Iran may submit a formal diplomatic extradition request without a corresponding notice. The two streams can run in parallel, and defending one does not automatically resolve the other.

Every week the notice stands, the underlying file in Germany hardens. German authorities will record each encounter with the notice – a border check, a police inquiry – and that record is visible to the courts if and when a formal request arrives. Acting on the Red Notice before that record grows is, in our experience, the more effective approach.

A challenge to the notice itself proceeds before the Commission for the Control of INTERPOL's Files (CCF). A deletion request is, under the applicable rules, to be decided within nine months of being found admissible. An access request to confirm what data INTERPOL holds must be answered within four months. There is no appeal against a CCF decision; a fresh request requires new elements. That is why the quality of the first CCF file matters as much as the extradition defence itself.

What are the strongest grounds to oppose extradition to Iran?

Several grounds can be raised in parallel, and the strongest defences are usually those that combine more than one. The key lines are as follows.

Human rights. German constitutional law and the Basic Law's guarantee of human dignity require courts to assess whether the person faces a real risk of treatment incompatible with those protections if surrendered. Iran's penal framework – including the application of punishments that German courts have consistently found incompatible with fundamental rights – provides substantial material for this argument. The argument does not depend on the political character of the prosecution; it applies to any case where the conditions of detention or the nature of the sentence would violate the constitutional minimum.

Dual criminality. German extradition law requires that the conduct alleged must constitute a criminal offence under both Iranian and German law. Where the Iranian charge describes conduct that is not criminal in Germany – or is framed in terms specific to Iranian law with no German equivalent – dual criminality fails and the request must be refused. We examine the charge sheet closely; a charge that looks like ordinary fraud sometimes describes conduct that German law would not criminalise in the same terms.

Political character. Under Article 3 of INTERPOL's Constitution, notices connected to offences of a political, military, religious or racial character cannot lawfully be maintained. German extradition law contains a parallel bar on surrender where the offence is political in character. In CIS and MENA-origin cases we frequently see economic charges that mask a political motive. The same analysis applies here: where the charge is genuinely political in substance, both the CCF and the German courts can be addressed on that basis.

Refugee and asylum status. A person who holds refugee status in Germany, or who has received subsidiary protection, benefits from the principle of non-refoulement. That principle bars return to a country where there is a real risk of persecution. German extradition law recognises refugee status as grounds for automatic refusal of the request. If protection status has not yet been sought, that application may itself be a defence step that should be taken in parallel.

What happens in practice when someone is provisionally arrested in Germany?

Provisional arrest on an INTERPOL alert triggers a defined sequence in German procedure. The person must be brought before a court promptly. At that first hearing the court determines whether the conditions for continued provisional detention are met. The defence lawyer must be present and must act immediately: the first hearing is not a formality.

At the first hearing, counsel should raise every available ground in outline – human rights, dual criminality, political character, refugee status – without conceding anything. The court sets a deadline by which Iran must submit the formal extradition documents. If those documents are not submitted within the statutory window, the person must be released. That window is determined by German extradition law; its precise length is fixed by branch, not by the bilateral position.

In a recent matter (a MENA-origin notice, winter 2024), we acted at the first hearing in Germany and secured release from provisional detention on the basis that the formal extradition file had not been submitted within the required period. The underlying notice challenge before the CCF followed in parallel.

The submission of formal extradition documents opens the next phase: the extradition review by the Higher Regional Court (Oberlandesgericht). That court examines the formal conditions of extradition, including dual criminality and the human-rights assessment. An adverse decision by the Higher Regional Court can be appealed, and the Federal Government retains a political discretion to refuse surrender even where the court has approved it. That discretion exists precisely because extradition to states with problematic human-rights records raises questions that go beyond the legal criteria alone.

Can the Red Notice be challenged at the CCF in parallel with German proceedings?

Yes – and in our view it should be, in most cases. The CCF challenge and the extradition proceedings in Germany are independent but complementary. A successful CCF deletion removes the notice from circulation, limits the spread of the alert to other states, and – critically – takes away one of the tools Iran uses to locate the person if they travel outside Germany. It does not by itself end the extradition proceedings in Germany, because those are governed by national law. But a CCF deletion is a material event that German courts and the Federal Government may take into account when assessing the request.

The strongest CCF grounds in Iran-related cases are typically Article 3 of INTERPOL's Constitution (political character) and the RPD's data-accuracy requirements, where the underlying charge is shown to be based on fabricated or materially inaccurate material. Article 2, requiring respect for human rights, reinforces both.

In a separate matter (a CIS-origin notice connected to allegations with an Iranian cross-border element, summer 2025), the CCF file was submitted while extradition proceedings remained pending. Deletion followed the CCF's admissibility finding. The extradition proceedings were subsequently discontinued by the requesting state. Causation is never certain in such sequences, but the result illustrates why running both tracks is usually the stronger position.

The steps above describe the general shape of a parallel defence. Your position turns on the specific file, the charges, the timing and the state of any German proceedings.

For a confidential assessment of the grounds in your case, reach us at info@northlarkfirm.com or through a secure channel – Signal, Telegram or WhatsApp.

What should you not do when facing this corridor?

The most damaging mistake we see is waiting. The instinct to hope the notice will lapse on its own is understandable, but it is wrong. You cannot simply wait for a notice to expire. INTERPOL does not automatically delete notices after a fixed period; renewal is routine. Meanwhile, every interaction with German authorities while the notice is live adds to the record that will be visible to a court.

The second common mistake is addressing the CCF and the extradition proceedings as if they were the same thing. They are not. A CCF lawyer who does not understand German extradition procedure, and a German extradition lawyer who has not seen a CCF file, will each miss arguments that are only visible from the other angle. Coordination between the two tracks is not optional; it is the substance of the defence.

The third mistake is submitting a weak first CCF file in the hope of buying time. There is no appeal against a CCF decision. A refusal closes the door until genuinely new elements exist. A well-constructed first file is always the correct approach, even if it takes longer to prepare.

If a first CCF request has already produced a refusal, a careful second reading can identify what was missing and whether new elements now exist. That re-assessment must be honest: if the grounds are thin, we say so.

For an honest view of whether there are grounds to challenge the notice or the extradition request, contact us confidentially at info@northlarkfirm.com.

What are the realistic prospects?

Honest assessment is the only useful one. The corridor from Germany to Iran is, in practice, one of the hardest extraditions for Iran to complete. The absence of a treaty, Germany's strong constitutional protections, and the documented human-rights position in Iran all create structural obstacles to surrender. In our experience, a well-evidenced human-rights defence, supported by a parallel CCF challenge where the facts allow, gives strong prospects for either defeating the extradition request or achieving a deletion at the CCF level.

Those prospects depend entirely on the quality of the file and the timing of the intervention. A person who acts before provisional arrest has more options. A person who acts at the first hearing still has strong options. A person who has already been the subject of an adverse court decision has fewer, but not none – the Federal Government's political discretion remains, and CCF grounds may still be viable if new elements exist.

No honest practitioner guarantees a result in extradition or CCF proceedings. What we can offer is a clear-eyed reading of the file and a well-constructed case on the grounds that genuinely apply.

Related

• Extradition from Germany – how German extradition law operates across all requesting states
• Red Notice issued at Iran's request – the specific grounds to challenge an Iran-origin notice at the CCF
• Article 2 human-rights grounds – arguing the human-rights bar under INTERPOL's Constitution

Frequently asked questions

What happens at a first extradition hearing?

At the first extradition hearing in Germany following a provisional arrest, the court determines whether the legal conditions for continued detention are satisfied. Defence counsel must attend and must raise available grounds immediately: human rights, dual criminality, political character and refugee status are all arguable at this stage. The court will set a deadline by which the requesting state must submit the formal extradition documents. If those documents are not provided within the required period, release follows as a matter of German extradition law.

Can extradition be refused on human-rights grounds?

Yes. German constitutional law and the Basic Law require courts to refuse extradition where surrender would expose the person to treatment incompatible with fundamental rights. Iran's penal framework provides substantial material for this argument. The human-rights assessment is conducted by the Higher Regional Court and may be reinforced on appeal. It operates independently of whether the offence alleged is political in character, meaning it applies across a wide range of Iranian requests.

How does the Red Notice affect the request?

A Red Notice issued at Iran's request alerts German border and police authorities and can trigger a provisional arrest. It is legally separate from the formal extradition request; one may exist without the other. An active notice hardens the German file over time. Challenging the notice before the CCF – on grounds of political character, data accuracy, or the human-rights bar under INTERPOL's Constitution – runs in parallel with the extradition defence and can materially alter the overall position. Deletion of the notice does not automatically end extradition proceedings, but it is a significant event.

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NORTHLARK is an independent international boutique. We act before the CCF and in extradition proceedings for individuals facing notices and requests from jurisdictions with difficult human-rights records. We work in the language of the file and the requesting state, coordinating CCF and national proceedings as a single strategy. We act only on lawful mandates and do not help anyone evade legitimate justice; we take on a matter only where we see genuine grounds. The first assessment is confidential. Our enquiry form does not require your real name, and you can reach us through a secure channel – Signal, Telegram or WhatsApp – or directly at info@northlarkfirm.com.