The main suspicion of the ‘Madeleine affair‘, who is serving time in a German prison for other crimes, could be released in September 2025, after being acquitted on Tuesday of three counts of rape and two counts of child sexual abuse.
A court in Braunschweig (central Germany) declared Christian Brückner not guilty in a trial which has nothing to do with the disappearance of the young girl Madeleine McCann and in which several attacks that the German allegedly committed in Portugal between 2000 and 2017 were judged.
The magistrates determined that there was not enough evidence to incriminate Brücknerwhile the prosecution – which had already announced in advance that it would appeal the sentence in the event of acquittal – requested 15 years in prison.
The prosecution accused him of stalking several children and masturbating in front of them, as well as having raped a young Irish girl at knifepoint after entering his apartment and other sexual assaults for which there is only evidence in videotapes that have never been found.
The Irish victim came to testify in the proceedings last May, but since then the man who raped her had his face covered with a mask, unambiguous identification of the author was not possible.
Brückner is currently serving a sentence of seven years in prison for the rape of an American woman in 2005, also in southern Portugal, but, unless the prosecution’s appeal is successful, He will be released in less than a year.
In 2020, the Brunswick public prosecutor’s office announced that Brückner was suspected of kidnapping and murdering the little girl. Madeleine McCannbut has not yet formally filed a complaint.
The disappearance of the young British woman from the tourist apartment she occupied with her family in the Portuguese Algarve in 2007 constitutes one of the most media and cases under investigation of this type of all time.
Brücker was nearby when the girl disappeared, according to his cell phone signal, and a witness says the suspect confessed to the girl’s murder, but at the moment there is not enough evidence to formally accuse him. him.
