German court acquits main suspect in another case, prosecutors appeal

A legal twist resulted, on Tuesday October 8 in Germany, in the acquittal of the man suspected of being responsible for the disappearance of Maddie McCann in a separate case, where he was on trial for several sexual offenses. German prosecutors said they would appeal the verdict.

A fifteen-year prison sentence was requested by the public prosecutor in this trial, which has been ongoing since February and in which Christian Brückner appeared for two sexual assaults and three rapes committed between 2000 and 2017 in Portugal. This case is separate from the Maddie case, a little British girl who disappeared in 2007 in the same country.

The acquittal pronounced Tuesday by the court in Brunswick (northern Germany) opens the way to a possible release of this 47-year-old German during the year 2025, when he will have finished serving his sentence for rape which landed him in prison for several years in Germany. “We consider that the judgment is erroneous”declared Attorney General Christian Wolters to Agence France-Presse.

Repeat sex offender

The latter 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, known as “Maddie”, McCann disappeared.

In the case, two complainants identified Mr. Brückner 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 in a playground.

Mr. Brückner was also on trial for the rape of a seventy-year-old woman, tied and beaten in her vacation 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 of having entered via the balcony. The latter had given chilling testimony in court describing a rape accompanied by violence and which was filmed. The author was masked.

Over the course of almost forty hearings, the judges of the Brunswick court appeared to doubt whether the evidence was sufficient to once again convict the repeat sex offender. They did not appear convinced by the statements of several acquaintances of Mr. Brückner or witnesses on whom a large part of the accusation rests. Traces of DNA are also lacking in the various cases tried. The president of the court, Uta Engemann, declared on Tuesday that the accused could not, as it stands, “be condemned for the acts with which he is accused”.

Not indicted in the McCann file

This court decision represents a setback for the Brunswick prosecutor’s office, which hoped that a new conviction – and a new prison sentence – would give it more time for its investigations into the McCann case.

At the time of the facts, the accused lived on the Portuguese coast of the Algarve, near the McCanns’ vacation spot, and the telephone marking of a cell phone in his name indicated his presence near the McCann’s home. couple for half an hour on the evening of the disappearance.

In their indictment, prosecutors described Mr. 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. The accused did not speak during his trial.

German justice caused a sensation in 2020 by saying it was convinced of the involvement of Mr. 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 many. He has not, at this stage, been indicted in this case.

In 2007, Maddie disappeared at age 3 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 court hearings in northern Germany.