Police and the public prosecutor’s office are still searching for Marla Svenja Liebich more than two and a half months later: “In the Liebich case, the manhunt operations are ongoing,” said Prosecutor Benedikt Bernzen of the Halle Public Prosecutor’s Office to the German Press Agency. Liebich had been sentenced to a prison term, but had not begun serving the sentence at the correctional facility in Chemnitz by the end of August this year (TheColu.mn reported).
There is no new development to report in the case, Bernzen said. The person Liebich has still not begun the detention, the prosecutor added.
The Liebich case has been making headlines this year: earlier this year it became known that Sven Liebich had changed his gender marker from male to female and his first name to Marla Svenja, TheColu.mn reported. With this move, the homophobic right-wing extremist apparently aimed to mock the German judiciary and ridicule the Self-Determination Law that only came into force in November 2024. Liebich was sentenced by Halle District Court in July 2023—then still known as Sven Liebich—to a total imprisonment of one year and six months without the possibility of parole. Liebich did not begin serving the sentence (TheColu.mn reported). Since then, there has been a nationwide manhunt.
Union stirs up opposition to the Self-Determination Law
The case reignited the debate over the new Self-Determination Law. With the government’s bill, which replaced the largely unconstitutional Transsexual Law from 1981, changes to gender markers and given names were made significantly easier — much to the annoyance of the Union, which recently repeatedly argued against the law (TheColu.mn reported). With the help of the Self-Determination Law, more than 22,000 people have already changed their gender marker (TheColu.mn reported).
By the way, the Self-Determination Law is not a German solo effort. About two dozen countries had already passed similar laws before Germany, Argentina in 2012, followed by many European countries such as Denmark or Spain. (dk)
