Christian Brückner, suspect in Maddie’s disappearance, acquitted in another case. German prosecutors will appeal
German justice on Tuesday acquitted Christian Brückner, considered the main suspect in the disappearance of Maddie McCann. The 47-year-old German was on trial for several sexual offenses in proceedings separate from the investigation into the British girl.
The public prosecutor had requested a 15-year prison sentence in this trial. Christian Brückner has been appearing since February for two sexual assaults and three rapes committed between 2000 and 2017 in Portugal. But the court judge pronounced his acquittal on Tuesday, deploring the absence of tangible evidence, testimonies in part “worthless” as well as a “autosuggestion and suggestion by third parties” against the accused due to the media coverage surrounding him.
Raised in a foster family where he suffered repeated mistreatment and violence, he was 17 when a Bavarian court sentenced him, in 1994, to two years in prison for violence against a child and “sexual acts in front of a child”. The following year, his sentence partially served, he left for Portugal and lived for more than 10 years in the Algarve, where Maddie McCann disappeared during a family vacation.
In 2007, the year the little Briton disappeared, Christian Brückner returned to settle in Germany, in Hanover. It then alternates with stays in Portugal. Years later, in June 2017, Portuguese police arrested Brückner again after he allegedly masturbated in front of children in a playground.
Sentenced in 2017
Extradited to Germany, he was caught up in a series of investigations. He was sentenced in the fall of 2017 to 15 months in prison for sexual violence against a child, then in 2019 for the rape of a 72-year-old American woman perpetrated in Portugal in 2005.
The acquittal verdict paves the way for Christian Brückner to be released sometime next year, when he has finished serving the sentence for rape which has put him in prison for several years in Germany.
German prosecutors will appeal the conviction
German prosecutors have indicated that they will appeal the acquittal verdict handed down Tuesday against Christian Brückner.
Over the course of almost forty hearings since February, the judges of the Brunswick court had seemed to doubt that the evidence was sufficient to once again convict this man with a long criminal past. They did not seem convinced by the statements of several acquaintances of Brückner or witnesses on whom a large part of the accusation rests. Traces of DNA are lacking in the various cases tried.
On Tuesday, the president of the court announced that the accused could not “be convicted for the acts with which he is accused”.
“We consider that the judgment is erroneous”said Attorney General Christian Wolters. The prosecution had requested a sentence of 15 years in prison in this trial.
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. He has not been charged in this case at this stage.
christian bruckner
Maddie McCann
Related News :