A Brazilian court freed a German diplomat arrested earlier this month in connection with the death of his Belgian husband, letting him face the murder investigation in freedom. Uwe Herbert Hahn had been on pre-emptive arrest in Rio de Janeiro since August 7 following the death of his husband, Walter Biot. Prosecutors have yet to formally charge 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 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.” (https://www.scmp.com/news/world/americas/article/3190439/brazil-court-frees-german-diplomat-arrested-over-husbands-death) 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 flat in the Ipanema neighbourhood after suffering a sudden illness. Police arrested Hahn on suspicion of murder after their forensics found bloodstains in the flat and the autopsy of Biot’s body showed multiple wounds, leading them to consider the case a “violent death.”