Toby Studabaker, 31, appeared before a Frankfurt judge on Thursday and said he would not oppose a British demand to have him extradited, a process that officials said at the time could be over within days.

However a spokeswoman for state prosecutors, Hildegard Becker-Toussaint, told AFP that "from experience, these procedures generally take some weeks.

Studabaker has been charged with child abduction and is being held at Weiterstadt prison near the western city of Frankfurt awaiting his extradition.

The 31-year-old Afghan war veteran left northern England on Saturday on a five-day escapade with British girl Shevaun Pennington, with whom he had exchanged e-mails and telephone calls over the period of a year.

He told the judge in Frankfurt, where he was arrested on Wednesday trying to make his way to the US consulate, that he had not had sex with the girl and had believed that she was not a minor.

Shevaun was reunited with her parents on Wednesday.

WAR.WIRE