US rapper Freddie Gibbs, who is charged with the sexual abuse of a female fan in Austria, was released on bail from a Vienna prison on Thursday, court officials said.
The 34-year-old from Gary, Indiana, left the Wien-Josefstadt jail after paying €50,000 (£43,147) and surrendering his passport, court spokeswoman Christina Salzborn said.
He has been barred from leaving the country while the case is still open, she said.
Gibbs, whose real name is Fredrick Tipton, was extradited in late July from France where police arrested him on a European arrest warrant shortly before a planned gig in the southwestern city of Toulouse.
The American is accused of drugging two women – aged 16 and 17 at the time – after a concert in Vienna on 6 July 2015, and taking them back to his hotel where he is said to have abused one of them. On Wednesday, prosecutors charged Gibbs with “sexual abuse of a defenceless or psychologically impaired person”.
Gibbs faces up to 10 years in prison if found guilty. He has denied the claims.
One of his bodyguards allegedly also forced himself upon both women. But Austrian authorities have been unable to question the man because he has returned to the US.
“There is no objective evidence that Freddie Gibbs even had sex with this woman,” his lawyer in Vienna Thomas Kralik told APA, the Austrian news agency.
Gibbs’s US lawyer, Theodore Simon, released a statement to Pitchfork, in which he said the granting of bail was “the first step toward his eventual exoneration and vindication”.
He added: “Yesterday’s charge remains only an allegation, and it does not in any way change the actual facts that Freddie Gibbs is 100% innocent.
“As he has done with his bail request, he continues to pursue every available means to demonstrate that he is absolutely innocent and that he has been both belatedly and wrongly accused.
“As the investigation and process continues, Mr Gibbs remains hopeful that a thorough, searching and complete investigation will reveal the actual facts, including the absence of any scientific, physical, or credible evidence implicating him, thereby paving the way for his exoneration and return to his family and one-year-old child.
“In accordance with Austrian procedure Mr Gibbs has not as yet had the opportunity to provide the authorities and the Court with the substantial and compelling exonerating evidence that he has compiled.”
