Ex-marine agrees to extradition

FORMER US Marine Toby Studabaker will not fight extradition to Britain from Germany, he told a court yesterday.

The decision means he could appear before a British court within days, to face charges of child abduction.

Studabaker made a ten-minute private appearance before a judge in Frankfurt yesterday, before being sent to jail on remand.

Court official Claus Michael Ullrich told reporters: "He agreed to the informal extradition, which means he might be in Manchester in the next ten days, eight days or seven days."

Ullrich said the US citizen told the judge he had not had sex with Shevaun and that he thought she was 18.

"He said he had no sexual relations with Shevaun," he said.

Studabaker also reportedly told the judge the pair had not realised police were looking for them until they reached Strasbourg on the French-German border, where they read about the hunt in a newspaper.

The ex-marine said he had then taken Shevaun to Stuttgart to fly home and had driven on to Frankfurt to go to the US consulate.

Studabaker faced the German judge alone, with no police in the room, and had not asked for a lawyer.

He was wearing shorts and a T-shirt as he answered the judge's questions.

German prosecutors were not expected to press charges.

"They don't know whether he committed a crime or not, but at the moment they think there was no crime in Germany," Mr Ullrich said.

British police travelled to Germany with an international warrant for his extradition this morning.

Studabaker is alleged to have travelled from the US to Britain to meet Shevaun, from Lowton, near Wigan, Greater Manchester, after befriending her on an internet chat site.

The pair are understood to have gone to France together, before crossing the border into Germany on Tuesday, when Shevaun caught a flight home from Stuttgart Airport.

Studabaker was arrested shortly afterwards, near the US consulate in Frankfurt.

Meanwhile, Shevaun spent the next day with her parents, away from the family home and away from the glare of publicity following their joyful reunion.

Specially trained police officers were, however, expecting to speak to the 12-year-old at some stage, in a bid to find out where she has been in the days between her disappearance and phoning home on Tuesday.

Detectives had been able to use the pair's mobile phone signals to trace where they were calling from on Tuesday morning, when Studabaker also called the FBI.

Within hours, he had been arrested on suspicion of child abduction as he walked alone through Frankfurt, and Shevaun was met at Manchester Airport by police.