By not opposing the extradition demand, Toby Studabaker could be sent to Britain within days, said the official, Klaus Michael Ullrich.

The 31-year-old Afghan war veteran told the Frankfurt district court that he did not have sex with Shevaun Pennington, with whom he had formed a relationship exchanging e-mails and telephone calls over the period of a year.

Ullrich said Studabaker, who has been charged with child abduction, had believed the girl was not a minor, although police have claimed that he was aware of her true age.

During the hearing, the accused recounted the events of a five-day escapade with Shevaun which began after he met her in person for the first time in northwest England on Saturday.

He said they had flown together from the English city of Manchester to Paris and then travelled on to the northeast French city of Strasbourg.

During that time they discovered in a newspaper that police were searching for them, Ullrich explained.

Studabaker said he then took Shevaun to Stuttgart, where she took a return flight back to Britain, while he called the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) in the United States for advice on what to do next.

After the FBI told him to contact US authorities in Germany, he was arrested in Frankfurt on Wednesday trying to get to the US consulate there.

He was picked up after a sweeping manhunt involving British, French and German police and the US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), and coordinated by the international police agency Interpol.

After the hearing Thursday, Studabaker was taken to Weiterstadt prison, near Frankfurt, to await his extradition procedure.

Studabaker's arrest came after police sources revealed that child pornography had been downloaded from the Internet onto his computer, information reportedly withheld so as not to jeopardise the investigation.

However a spokeswoman for state prosecutors in Frankfurt, Hildegard Becker-Toussaint, said earlier they had not established grounds to charge him with intent to sexually abuse the girl.

Police in Studabaker's home state of Michigan have also said that he does not figure on its Public Sex Offender Registry, indicating no criminal record for sexual abuse.

Becker-Toussaint described him as "cooperative and showing no signs of aggression" in his contact with the German authorities. He was questioned by British police for most of Thursday morning.

He has been described as a devout Christian who attended a bible college in Ohio from 1993 to 1994. His wife Jenny died of cancer last year. The couple were childless, according to his family.

He grew up in Constantine, Michigan, where he trained in martial arts and was a keen American football player. He was decorated after serving with the marines in Afghanistan but left the military in June with a shoulder injury.

Shevaun, meanwhile, was reunited with her parents in an emotional homecoming on Wednesday after her elopement with the US ex-soldier.

She was still with her parents in northern England Thursday, being kept away from both the family home near Manchester and the media spotlight.

Specially trained police officers had been hoping to speak to her Thursday to find out where she had been in the days between her disappearance and phoning home on Wednesday to say she was on her way back.

WAR.WIRE