GERMANY: Former US marine Toby Studabaker has agreed to be extradited to Britain to face charges of abducting a 12-year-old English schoolgirl after telling a German court he did not have sex with her, writes Derek Scally from Berlin.
Mr Studabaker (31), from Michigan, told German authorities yesterday that he thought Shevaun Pennington was 18.
"I had no sexual intercourse with her," said Mr Studabaker, wearing a T-shirt and jeans during a 10-minute closed court session in Frankfurt yesterday, according to a court spokesman.
The former marine met the girl in an Internet chat room but met her in person for the first time when he flew to Manchester on Saturday. The two then flew on to Paris and vanished, sparking a Europe-wide manhunt.
Mr Studabaker told the court yesterday he only knew of the manhunt when he read about it in a newspaper in Strasbourg.
He called the federal authorities in the US and was told to hand himself into the US consulate in Frankfurt. He was arrested as he made his way there on Wednesday, hours after he put the girl on a plane in Stuttgart bound for England.
German authorities concluded yesterday that there were no charges they could press against Mr Studabaker before sending him to the UK.
"There are no indications that Studabaker committed a sex crime in Germany," said Ms Hildegard Becker-Toussant, a spokeswoman for the state prosecutor's office.
"He only spent a few hours on German soil and, as far as we know so far, only in a train and on his way to the airport. So it is unlikely that he committed sexual offences in Germany." German authorities said an extradition was likely "within the next two weeks" as a result of Mr Studabaker's co-operation.
"Up to now, he has seemed to be willing to co-operate. He is not being aggressive," said Ms Becker-Toussant. "The British officers are here to interrogate him and have been doing so all morning." Shevaun Pennington was reunited with her parents on Wednesday. Since then, the family has left their home in Leigh, near Manchester, for an undisclosed location. Shevaun went to Leigh police station for preliminary questioning yesterday.