Germany has approved the uncontested extradition to Britain of a former US marine who eloped with a 12-year-old British girl he met through the Internet, a chief prosecutor said Thursday.Gernot Broschat said the government had given the green light earlier this week for 31-year-old Toby Studabaker to be extradited.
British authorities had demanded his extradition after he was charged with child abduction.
Broschat told AFP that there was as yet no date for the formal handover but that it could be the week after next.
"The accused has agreed to his extradition ever since his arrest. There is no case against him in Germany," Broschat said.
Studabaker, who took part in the US-led operation that ousted Afghanistan's Taliban militia, is being held at a prison near the western German city of Frankfurt.
He left northern England in mid-July on a five-day escapade with a British girl, Shevaun Pennington, with whom he had swapped e-mails and telephone calls over the period of a year.
He was arrested on his way to the US consulate in Frankfurt, while Pennington was flown back to Britain to be reunited with her parents.
Studabaker told a Frankfurt judge after his arrest that he had not had sex with the girl and had believed she was not a minor.
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