The verdict of the judges will be heard today by the 47-year-old German Christian Bruckner, the main suspect in the case of the disappearance of Madeleine McCann 17 years ago.
Bruckner is accused of raping three women and two children in Portugal between 2000 and 2017. The judges’ decision could prove crucial in further investigations into Madeleine’s disappearance, the Guardian reports.
During the closing arguments in court, prosecutors proposed that Bruckner be jailed for 15 years, calling him a “psychopathic sadist”. But his lawyer said on Monday he should be acquitted, questioning the veracity of witness accounts and telling the court: “The trial should never have been held.”
What he had said about the child he “found and took”
Friedrich Fulscher argued that the trial was overshadowed by the case of Madeleine’s disappearance, suggesting that his client might not have been charged if he had not already been the prime suspect in the girl’s disappearance.
If Bruckner is acquitted today he could be released from prison, which could seriously affect German prosecutors’ efforts to pursue his alleged involvement in Madeleine’s case.
A convicted rapist and pedophile was named in June 2020 as the prime suspect in Madeleine’s 2007 disappearance from the Algarve resort of Praia da Luz, where she was holidaying with her parents. He was never charged.
A former inmate of Bruckner told the court last month that he had confessed to him that he had once kidnapped a child in Portugal. As he had told him one night he had seen an “open window” and that he “found a child and took him”.
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