The news show covered a situation where decisions on repatriating foreign national criminals tend to be punted between the courts, the prosecutors and the justice ministry.

While the Prosecutor's Office has said it is concerned early release and repatriation could encourage foreign nationals to break the law in Estonia at will, the Ministry of Justice said it does not see an issue, passing responsibility to the judges instead.

For instance, Dmitri Pronin, a convicted drug dealer sentenced to 13 years in prison, started the process of seeking repatriation from Estonia this year.

Both the first tier county and second tier circuit courts found that this could only happen once he had served two-thirds of his sentence, yet so far he had only been incarcerated for three years.

In summer, however, the Supreme Court ruled that the updated Criminal Procedure Code does not specify a minimum period of imprisonment, meaning there is no basis to deny the deportation process.

Supreme Court judge Paavo Randma said: "The law states this, clearly and unequivocally, and leaving no room for debate. It really is as simple as that."

"The Supreme Court has only taken a position on when a person has the right to apply to the court with such a request," Randma, who sits in the top court's criminal chamber, added.

The legal amendment enacted in 2018 when Urmas Reinsalu (Isamaa) was justice minister aimed to lift from Estonia the financial burden of hosting foreign national criminals in its prisons.

The Ministry of Justice now acknowledges that the situation is not so black-and-white, however.

Andreas Kangur, head of the ministry's criminal law and procedures department, said: "A criminal commits a crime, is then sentenced to several years in prison, but then is effectively released the next day."

"This might not seem reasonable, or align with most people's sense of justice. However, this is the point where the court must assess whether, in a specific case, these considerations justify granting or denying the request," Kangur went on.

The practice in recent months has raised concerns within the Prosecutor's Office, since several foreign nationals with long sentences to their names have commenced the process to request repatriation to their country of origin.

Decisions on these cases the sole responsibility of a judge, while the Prosecutor's Office is left out of that decision-making process. It also cannot appeal any repatriation decision.

State prosecutor Raigo Aas referred to two recent, notable cases over the past couple of months.

"Vyacheslav Gulevich, the leader of the Kemerovo criminal group, who served barely half of his sentence, while an even more striking example is that of Yağiz Biler, who served only seven months of a 10-year sentence before being deported from Estonia," Aas said.

As an aside, the Supreme Court had just a year earlier refused to allow the early release of the Kemerovo group ringleader.

According to Aas this new practice has a situation in which foreign criminals may be emboldened to commit crimes in Estonia, since no significant prison sentence will follow, and the state is quick to repatriate them to their country of origin.

Aas said: "If this trend continues, whereby individuals sentenced to long prison terms are released halfway through their sentence or significantly earlier, then this is a situation where a legislative amendments should be considered."

The Ministry of Justice meanwhile is not in a rush to make any amendments, and instead has suggested that the first step should be to ask judges why repatriation decisions are being made so easily.

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