Brazil court frees German consul arrested over husband’s death

By: 2 years ago

A screen grab from a video shows Brazilian police officers escorting Uwe Herbert Hahn, German consul in Rio de Janeiro, following his arrest for the alleged murder of his husband, in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, August 7, 2022. Reuters TV via REUTERS

RIO DE JANEIRO — A Brazilian court on Friday freed a German diplomat arrested earlier this month in connection with the death of his Belgian husband, letting him face the homicide investigation in freedom.

Uwe Herbert Hahn had been on preemptive arrest in Rio de Janeiro since Aug. 7 following the death of his husband, Walter Biot. Prosecutors have yet to indict him.

His release, confirmed by Rio de Janeiro’s state department of prisons, came after Judge Rosa Helena Guita ruled that prosecutors missed the initial deadline to present charges.

In her Aug. 25 decision, Guita cited a clear “excess of time limit for a criminal action to be filed, noting that “no charges had been filed so far, nine days after the 10-day legal deadline expired.”

The Rio de Janeiro prosecutor’s office said in a statement to Reuters that it had not yet been summoned to file charges.

“The deadline for offering the charges has not even started,” the statement said.

At the time of Biot’s death, Hahn said he had fallen from their apartment in the Ipanema neighborhood after suffering a sudden illness.

Police arrested Hahn on suspicion of murder after their forensics found bloodstains in the apartment and the autopsy of Biot’s body showed multiple wounds, leading them to consider the case a “violent death.”