Madeleine McCann case: German charges loom as new evidence found

German prosecutors say they have new evidence linking Christian Brückner to the disappearance of Madeleine McCann exactly 15 years ago.

Prosecutors dealing with the case in Braunschweig are likely to press charges by the end of May against Brückner, a convicted rapist and child sex abuser, who is serving a prison sentence for rape in Oldenburg.

“The investigation is still going and I think we found some new facts, some new evidence – not forensic evidence, but some evidence,” German prosecutor Hans Christian Wolters told Portuguese television. “We are sure he is the murderer of Madeleine McCann.”

The prosecutor declined to go into the detail of the evidence but, when asked if any items linked to the British girl were found in the caravan where Brückner lived at the time, he said: “I don’t want to deny it.”

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As the only suspect, Brückner is likely to face up to five charges should he go on trial in Germany. They include incidents in which Brückner is alleged to have exposed himself and masturbated in front of children in Portugal on two occasions, a decade apart. After the second incident in 2017, involving four young children, he was arrested by local police.

In the earlier case, from 2007, he reportedly masturbated in public before a 10-year-old girl. The incident is said to have taken place just weeks before the disappearance of the British girl, and a few kilometres from Praia da Luz in the Algarve region.

Madeleine went missing on May 3rd, 2007, from a hotel room while her parents, Kate and Gerry McCann, ate dinner at a nearby restaurant.

Irish woman

A final case being examined by the German prosecutors involves an Irish woman who in 2004 says Brückner raped her while she was in Portugal, an attack with echoes of the 2005 rape of a 72-year-old American woman for which he is now behind bars.

A prosecutor in Braunschweig told the Frankfurter Allgemeine newspaper on Friday that Brückner’s defence team would be granted access to their files “in the coming days”, with a final decision on how to proceed due before the end of the month.

Last month Brückner, a German citizen who lived in the Algarve between 1995 and 2007, was named by Portuguese and German prosecutors as an official suspect. The move came two years after he was first linked to the case, at which time German prosecutors said they believed Madeleine McCann was dead.

Last month Kate and Gerry McCann said they “welcomed” the news, as it indicated “progress” in the investigation. “Even though the possibility may be slim, we have not given up hope that Madeleine is still alive and we will be reunited with her,” the couple said.

Brückner (45) has denied any involvement in the disappearance and says he was with his then-girlfriend for the entire night in question.

Mr Wolters, the prosecutor, told Portugal’s CMTV that Brückner had “no alibi”. Brückner’s long criminal record includes, as well as rape and indecent exposure, burglary of hotels and holiday homes, as well as fuel and passport theft.