A legal twist resulted, on Tuesday, October 8 in Germany, with the acquittal of the man suspected of being responsible for the disappearance of Maddie McCann in a separate case, where he was being tried for several sexual crimes. German prosecutors said they would appeal the verdict.
The prosecution requested a sentence of fifteen years in prison in this process, which has continued since February and in which Christian Brückner appears for two sexual assaults and three rapes committed between 2000 and 2017 in Portugal. This case is independent of the Maddie case, a little British girl who disappeared in 2007 in the same country.
The acquittal pronounced this Tuesday by the Brunswick court (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 that led him to prison for several years. . years in Germany. “We consider that the sentence is erroneous”declared Attorney General Christian Wolters to Agence France-Presse.
Sexual repeat offender
The latter is currently serving a seven-year prison sentence in Germany for the 2005 rape of an American woman, then 72 years old, in Praia da Luz, the city where Madeleine, known as “Maddie,” McCann disappeared.
In the case, two complainants identified Brückner after his photograph went around the world in 2020 in connection with the McCann case. Among them was a woman who was sexually assaulted when she was 10 on an Algarve beach in April 2007, just weeks before Madeleine McCann disappeared. In another case, he was accused of exposing himself to an 11-year-old Portuguese boy at a playground.
Mr. Brückner was also tried for the rape of a seventy-year-old woman tied up and beaten in her holiday apartment, of a boy of about 14 tied to a post in her house, and of a 20-year-old Irish woman. whose house he is accused of having entered through the balcony. The latter had given a chilling testimony in court describing a rape accompanied by violence and which was filmed. The perpetrator was masked.
During almost forty hearings, the judges of the Brunswick court seemed to doubt whether the evidence was sufficient to re-convict the repeat offender. They did not seem convinced by the statements of several acquaintances of Mr. Brückner or of witnesses on which much of the accusation is based. Traces of DNA are also missing in the different cases tried. The president of the court, Uta Engemann, declared on Tuesday that the accused could not, as things stand, “be convicted of the acts of which he is accused.”
Not charged in 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 events, the accused lived on the Portuguese Algarve coast, near the McCanns’ holiday resort, and the telephone dial of a mobile phone in his name indicated his presence near the McCanns’ house for half an hour. . the night of the disappearance.
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In their indictment, prosecutors described Mr. Brückner, a repeat sex offender, as “dangerous psychopathic sadist”. An expert psychiatrist estimated that he belonged to “the dangerous elite”. German researchers claim to have “concrete evidence” of Madeleine’s death. On the contrary, the defense denounces judicial implacability. The defendant did not speak during the trial.
German justice caused a sensation in 2020 by stating that it was convinced of the involvement of Mr. Brückner, then detained in Germany, in the disappearance of the British girl, a criminal enigma, with global repercussions where false clues and twists were made. numerous. So far he has not been charged in this case.
In 2007, Maddie disappeared at age 3 from the rental apartment where she was on vacation while her parents were having dinner nearby. His disappearance gave rise to an international campaign and an extraordinary media mobilization. Many British media attended the court hearings in northern Germany.
