Danish submarine skipper arrested for manslaughter of missing journalist feared drowned when his home-made vessel sank in Copenhagen
Today a Danish judge ruled Madsen would be detained for 24 days while police investigate
A DANISH inventor has been arrested for manslaughter over the disappearance of a Swedish journalist travelling in his home-made submarine before it mysteriously sank.
Peter Madsen was picked up by cops on Friday on preliminary manslaughter charges and has denied responsibility for the fate of 30-year-old Kim Wall.
After his 18-meter-long vessel went down near Copenhagen he said the missing journalist - feared drowned - left him before it sank.
Prosecutor Louise Pedersen told a packed courtroom today Madsen faces the preliminary charges "for having killed in an unknown way and in an unknown place Kim Isabell Frerika Wall of Sweden sometime after Thursday 5 p.m."
Wall's boyfriend alerted authorities early on Friday the submarine had not returned to Copenhagen as expected, sparking a major search involving two helicopters, three ships and several private boats.
The Navy said the sub was seen sailing, but then sank shortly afterwards.
Today a Danish judge ruled Madsen would be detained for 24 days while police investigate what happened before the ship sank.
Madsen's defence lawyer, Bettina Hald Engmark, said her client maintains his innocence and is "willing to cooperate".
The 46-year-old smiled and chatted with his lawyer before he said "I would very much like to express myself," after the preliminary charges were read.
Kristian Isbak, who had responded to the Navy's call to help locate the ship on Friday, told The Associated Press he first spotted Madsen standing wearing his trademark military fatigues in the submarine's tower while it was still afloat.
"He then climbed down inside the submarine and there was then some kind of air flow coming up and the submarine started to sink.
"(He) came up again and stayed in the tower until water came into it" - before swimming to a nearby boat as the submarine sank, he added.
Miss Wall's family said: "It is with great dismay that we received the news that Kim went missing during an assignment in Denmark."
The Sweden-born freelance journalist studied at the Sorbonne university in Paris, the London School of Economics and at Columbia University in New York, where she graduated with a master's degree in journalism in 2013.
She lived in New York and Peking and wrote for The New York Times, The Guardian, the South China Morning Post and Vice Magazine, among other publications.
A salvage vessel raised the submarine today, which was seven meters (23 feet) under water off Copenhagen's south island of Dragoer.
If tried and found guilty, Madsen would face between five years and life in prison.
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