German consul accused of killing husband leaves Brazil

A German consul accused of killing his husband in Rio de Janeiro has left Brazil and returned to Germany, a court said Monday, ordering he be named a fugitive by Interpol.

A magistrate determined that Uwe Herbert Hahn would be included in the international police organization’s fugitive database “based on the fact that the accused embarked Sunday for Germany,” the Court of Justice of Rio de Janeiro said in a statement.

Hahn was arrested on August 6 for allegedly killing his husband at their home, and then attempting to cover up the crime.

He told authorities his husband, Belgian national Walter Henri Maximilien Biot, had taken ill the night before, collapsing and fatally hitting his head.

But analysis of the body and the couple’s apartment in the upscale neighborhood of Ipanema found Biot had been severely beaten, police said.

Local media reports said Hahn, who had been married to Biot for 20 years, tried to clean up the scene before police arrived, and then told officers his husband had been drinking a lot and taking sleeping pills.

Hahn was arrested but a judge freed him last week after the deadline for the prosecution to offer a complaint expired.

He was allowed to keep his passport, and flew to Germany on Sunday.

The prosecutor’s office, which denies that the legal deadline had expired, charged him with homicide on Monday.

“The Civil Police [in charge of investigations] is perplexed” by the consul’s return to Germany, commissioner Camila Lourenco told O Globo newspaper.

“They could have determined an alternative precautionary measure to imprisonment, such as withholding his passport, which would have made it more difficult for him to escape,” she added.