arrest warrant
noun · Haftbefehl
A Haftbefehl orders pre-trial detention and needs three things under § 112 StPO: urgent suspicion, a statutory ground for detention and proportionality. Only a judge may issue it, and the grounds are a closed list, flight, risk of flight and risk of interference with evidence, with narrow additions elsewhere, so the warrant is not a general power to arrest a suspect.
Which translation, when
Why
Arrest warrant translates as Haftbefehl, and the German conditions are tighter than the English phrase suggests. Under § 112 Abs. 1 StPO pre-trial detention may be ordered against the accused where he is urgently suspected of the offence and a ground for detention exists, and the same provision bars the order where detention would be disproportionate to the significance of the case and to the penalty or measure to be expected. Urgent suspicion is a high threshold, requiring a high probability that the accused committed the offence, clearly more than the sufficient suspicion needed to bring a charge. The grounds themselves are listed in Abs. 2 and the list is exhaustive: that the accused is a fugitive or in hiding; that weighing the circumstances of the individual case there is a risk he will evade the proceedings, the Fluchtgefahr on which most warrants rest; and that his conduct gives urgent reason to fear he will destroy, alter, remove, suppress or falsify evidence or improperly influence co-accused, witnesses or experts, the Verdunkelungsgefahr. Two additions sit beside them, the relaxation in Abs. 3 for defined grave offences and the risk of repetition under § 112a StPO for certain series offences. Only a judge may issue the warrant and it must be written. What happens next is often misread by translators, because the warrant need not lead to detention at all: the court may suspend its execution against conditions, and a security is only one of them, the mechanism the bail entry holds. On the vocabulary, Haftbefehl names the order and Festnahme the physical act of arresting, while Verhaftung is the everyday word for the same event, so a translation should not use one for the other.
Typical mistakes
- A Haftbefehl needs urgent suspicion, a listed ground and proportionality, § 112 StPO, so treating it as a general power to arrest a suspect overstates it.
- The grounds of § 112 Abs. 2 StPO are exhaustive, so inventing a ground such as the seriousness of the offence alone misstates the law outside the narrow cases of Abs. 3.
- A warrant may be suspended against conditions, so assuming that its issue means detention misdescribes what usually follows.
What matters
Reporting on a German arrest warrant: the note should name the ground relied on, state whether urgent suspicion and proportionality are addressed, and mention that execution may be suspended against conditions.
What the machine misses
Machine output for arrest warrant gives Verhaftungsbefehl or Festnahmebefehl, words German procedure does not use, and the order is the Haftbefehl of § 112 StPO, resting on urgent suspicion, a listed ground for detention and proportionality; the invented wording also hides that only a judge may issue it and that its execution can be suspended.
Examples
| an arrest warrant was issued | ein Haftbefehl wurde erlassen |
| urgent suspicion of the offence | dringender Tatverdacht |
| risk of flight | Fluchtgefahr |
| the warrant was suspended | der Haftbefehl wurde außer Vollzug gesetzt |
More notes on these sections
custody Sorgerecht
bail Haftverschonung