MICHAEL MATTHEY / AFP
Christian B (left), defendant and main suspect in the 2007 disappearance of Madeleine McCann, standing next to his lawyer before the verdict in his trial, in the courtroom of Brunswick Magistrates’ Court, North L ‘Germany, October 8, 2024.
INTERNATIONAL – It is a real legal twist in one of the most high-profile international news stories of the 21st century. The man suspected of being responsible for the disappearance of Maddie McCann can now consider being released from custody in the near future. He was acquitted this Tuesday, October 8, in a separate case where he was on trial for sexual offenses.
A fifteen-year prison sentence was requested by the public prosecutor in this trial, which has been ongoing since February, where Christian Brückner was appearing for two sexual assaults and three rapes committed between 2000 and 2017 in Portugal. These cases are separate from the Maddie case, who disappeared in 2007 in the same country.
The acquittal pronounced this Tuesday by the court in Brunswick, in the north of Germany, paves the way for the possible release of this 47-year-old German during the course of next year, when he has finished serving the sentence for rape which resulted in him being incarcerated for several years in Germany.
The prosecution announced that it would appeal. “We consider that the judgment is erroneous”declared Attorney General Christian Wolters to AFP.
No DNA
Over the course of almost forty hearings, the judges of the Brunswick court seemed to doubt that the evidence was sufficient to once again convict this man with a long criminal record.
They did not seem convinced by the statements of several of Brückner’s acquaintances or witnesses on whom a large part of the accusation rests. Traces of DNA are lacking in the various cases tried.
The president of the court, Uta Engemann, declared on Tuesday that the accused could not “be convicted for the acts with which he is accused”.
This is a setback for the Brunswick public prosecutor’s office, which had hoped that a new conviction – and a new prison sentence – would give it more time for its investigations into the Maddie McCann case.
German justice caused a sensation in 2020 by saying it was convinced of the involvement of Christian Brückner, then detained in Germany, in the disappearance of the British girl, a criminal enigma, with worldwide repercussions where false leads and twists and turns were numerous . He has not been charged in this case at this stage.
In 2007, Maddie disappeared at the age of three from the rental apartment where she was vacationing while her parents dined nearby. His disappearance gave rise to an international campaign and extraordinary media mobilization.
Many British media attended the hearings at the court in northern Germany.
Masked rapist
At the material time, the accused lived on the Portuguese coast of the Algarve, near the McCanns’ vacation spot, and a cell phone in his name rang near their home for half an hour on the evening of the disappearance.
In their indictment, prosecutors described Brückner, a repeat sex offender, as “dangerous psychopathic sadist”. An expert psychiatrist estimated that it belonged to “the dangerous elite”.
German investigators claim to have “concrete evidence” of Madeleine’s death. On the contrary, the defense denounces judicial relentlessness.
Penetrating gaze, often in jacket and shirt, the brown-haired accused is not expressed during his trial. Two complainants identified him after his photo went around the world in 2020 in connection with the McCann affair.
They included a woman who was sexually assaulted when she was 10 on a beach in the Algarve in April 2007, just weeks before Madeleine McCann disappeared.
In another case, he was accused of exposing himself to an 11-year-old Portuguese child on a playground.
He was also on trial for the rape of a woman in her seventies, tied and beaten in her holiday apartment, of a child of around 14 tied to a post in her house and of a 20-year-old Irish woman in whose home he is accused. to have entered via the balcony. The latter had given chilling testimony in court describing a rape accompanied by violence and filmed. The author was masked.
Christian Brückner is currently serving a seven-year prison sentence in Germany for the rape in 2005 of an American woman aged 72 at the time, in Praia da Luz, the town where Madeleine McCann disappeared.
