The Germany described in this BBC story doesn't seem to be the one that I know.

I know that the main thrust of the story is about how Al Jazeera is the victim of a vendetta (maybe) by the Egyptian government, and their journalists have been subjected to possible unjust punishment for doing their jobs as journalists; that is actually very interesting and sad. The thing that struck me, however, is that Germany is executing an arrest warrant issued by the Egyptians, which Interpol rejected because it doesn't meet their standards, but apparently is good enough for German law enforcement.

The Germany that I am familiar with is the home of bureaucracy (they behave as if they invented it); the land where police chase you down the street for crossing on a red, and come to your house to stop tree surgeons because you failed to get permission from one of hundreds of affected neighbours; the land where you can't buy a car unless you are registered as resident with the federal government; the land of "ordnung muss sein". The idea that this country has laxer standards for extradition than Interpol is, quite frankly, shocking.

The world is full of regimes of questionable morality: lacking in democracy, where the rule of law is, at best, spotty. Should any civilised nation be, in this age, prepared to extradite a suspect (or in the case of the Al Jazeera journalist, a convicted, in absentia, criminal) when certain conditions (guarantees that the person will not be tortured or executed) and certain standards of proof are not met? Time to renegotiate those extradition agreements, I think.