British police quiz Shevaun's accused abductor

The former US marine accused of abducting a 12-year-old British girl was being questioned by British police in Germany today.

Toby Studabaker, 31, was arrested yesterday in the centre of Frankfurt on an international warrant.

Hours earlier the schoolgirl, Shevaun Pennington from Wigan, left Stuttgart on a plane to Manchester for a tearful reunion with her parents.

A German judge was expected to issue a detention order for Studabaker later today in preparation for his extradition to Britain, said Hildegard Becker-Toussaint, a spokeswoman for state prosecutors in Frankfurt.

German authorities initially said they would consider whether Studabaker from Michigan could be charged with any offence in Germany, but Becker-Toussaint said that is now “extremely unlikely”.

Studabaker had evaded police since he and Shevaun, whom he met in an Internet chat room, left Britain together on Saturday on a flight to Paris.

The pair spent two nights in France, and their movements after that were not immediately clear.

Yesterday morning, Studabaker took the girl to Stuttgart airport, Becker-Toussaint said.

“He put her on the plane,” she said. “By the time they arrived in Germany the episode was nearly over.”

Fears for Shevaun’s safety had mounted yesterday after police revealed that an inspection of Studabaker’s computer in the US showed he knew she was 12 – and not 19 as he told his relatives – and that the hard drive contained child porn.