By Amalia Theocharidou,
Germany has been shaken up the past days, due to the legal case of Marla-Svenja Liebich, known for her past far-right opinions. The woman, who’s transgender and formerly known as Sven Liebich, has taken part in multiple neonazist rallies of the extremist group, Blood and Honour, wearing uniforms, armbands and generally carrying such symbols. Her actions led to her capturing in 2023, under the offenses of slander and incitement to hatred and more. That year, she appealed but her demand was rejected, as the Halle District Court in Saxon-Anhalt sentenced her to “a total of one year and six months in prison without parole for extreme right incitement to hatred, defamation, and insult“, as BBC reports.
In 2024, Liebich applied for a change of gender, as well as name, according to Germany’s Self-Determination Act, an act that came into force in order to support the rights of transgender people. According to this proceeding, each person is allowed to change their gender and their name, by simply stating so to a registry office, without having to go through any judicial procedure. She started wearing women’s clothing but kept her moustache. Considering Liebich’s past and her multiple queerphobic comments, many are wondering whether her change of gender was genuine, or rather, convenient. In response, the prisoner has been actively taking legal measures against people who still misgender her, or even claim that she’s not being truthful. A big part of the public and even the authorities have been reaching out to the court, in order to stop them from granding her the right to serve at a women’s prison, but as herself posted on X, she will arrive to the women’s prison on August 29, in order to conclude her sentence.
According to her, she filled a change of prisons due to the harassement she was afraid she’d exeprience for her neo-nazist believes. Her fears weren’t in accordance with her actions, as it was discovered that she was a members with international activist action, as a supporter of “Sicherheits-Abteilung”, one of Hitler’s stormtrooper division. Due to the aforementioned, the German officials at the start claimed that she’d only be recognized as a woman under civil law and in prison system, she was still a man. Soon enough, though, the statement was overlooked, as the Act on which Liebich based her actions was supposed to provide a safe and just environment for all the trans people under the rule of law.
It is yet to be decided where Liebich will be placed, as the prison authorities will be monitoring her behaviour and in case of any hussle, she will be placed elsewhere. Liebich is still having ongoing judicial battes with the people she finds offensive, as she recently lost a case against the journalist Julian Reichelt at Berlin Regional Court. The journalist posted on X “Anyone who follows the reporting on neo-Nazi Sven Liebich can only come to one conclusion: The traffic-light coalition government has managed, by law, to force almost the entire German media landscape to tell untruths and make grotesquely false claims. Sven Liebich is not a woman.”
References
- German controversy surrounds jail term for transgender far-right extremist. BBC. Available here
- German neo-Nazi to serve sentence in women’s prison after changing gender. Scotish Legal News. Available here
