The lawyer of the main suspect in the disappearance of Madeleine McCann sees his accusation “overestimated”

The accusation in Portugal of the German Christian Brueckner for the disappearance in the Portuguese Algarve of Madelein McCann 15 years ago “is a procedural strategy that should not be overestimated”. That is the interpretation that Brueckner’s lawyer makes of the step taken by the Portuguese justice system against his client, who is currently serving a seven-year sentence in prison and rape of an american 72 years old, also in the Algarve.

For the lawyer Friedrich Flscher, the indictment of Brueckner by Portuguese justice has more to do with the times than with the evidence. “Portugal tries to stop the prescription that is coming in a few days”affirm.

According to the Portuguese legislation, the crimes punished with a sentence of prisin de diez in the month prescribed in the 15th year. Deadline to investigate Maddie’s death or murder is May 3, 2022. In the event that ‘Maddie’ McCann was still alive and had been the victim of a sexual crime when she was a minor, the statute of limitations applies after 23 years. Since these deadlines do not apply in Germany, the only way to keep the dossier open against Brueckner is elevate him to the status of defendant.

The announcement of the Portuguese justice has come in the form of a request for judicial cooperation to the German public ministry. The Portuguese side did not publicly name the accused, but sources from that Prosecutor’s Office consulted by this newspaper confirm that the request refers to Brueckner.

The German Prosecutor’s Office declared Madelein dead in June 2020 -Scotland Yard only for missing- and declared Brueckner as the main suspect, who was already serving a sentence for raping a woman in the same place where Madeleine disappeared in 2007. But since then, Brueckner, 45, has not been charged with any crime in connection with the McCann case.. The accumulated evidence against him is massive but not conclusive.

The individual, with an extensive criminal record for drugs, robbery, child abuse and distribution of child pornography, lived in the Algarve between 1995 and 2007. He combined temporary work with theft in hotels and vacation apartments, according to court documents. He also forged passports and was caught stealing diesel in a Portuguese port. Already in 2012, the Portuguese Judicial Police handed over documents to the British authorities in 2012 with hundreds of names related to the Madeleine case, including that of Christian Brueckner.

Brueckner. He was born in 1976 in the city of Wrzburg, in the federal state of Bavaria and was adopted by the family that gave him his last name in a juvenile center.

His first contact with Justice was in 1992, at the age of 16. He was accused of aggravated robbery, for which the German criminal code provides for prison sentences of between 3 months and 10 years. Being a minor, he was placed on probation. In 1994, returned to sit on the bench for abusing a 6-year-old girl in a park. Then he tried it with a 9-year-old boy. He was sentenced to two years of imprisonment. He fulfilled half. From there, there was a trail of bodily harm, drunk or unlicensed driving, sexual harassment, child abuse, drugs, and the distribution of child pornography.

From 1995 to 2007, the German Police lose sight of him. Those were the years that Bauer lived in Portugal, where he followed his criminal career. In September 2005 he even raped a 72-year-old American woman at her home in Praia da Luz. She blindfolded her, tied her up, beat her up and stole 100 euros from her. The case would be resolved ten years later, when Brueckner was already in Germany. It was possible thanks to a hair found in the woman’s bed by the Portuguese police and placed in a safe place. A subsequent DNA analysis gave him away. Two years after that rape and still residing in Portugal, Madeleine McCann disappeared without a trace from the bed where she slept, in a tourist apartment in Praia da Luz. The German lived at that time in a country house between Lagos and Praia da Luz.

Bauer’s return to Germany was not a clean slate. In its Police file contains up to 17 crimes. In October 2011, a court in the federal state of Schleswig-Holsstein sentenced him to one year and nine months in prison for trading in large quantities of narcotic substances. In 2013 he was again accused of sexual abuse of a minor and possession of child pornography and in 2016 sentenced by the Braunschweig Court to one year and three months in prison. After serving his sentence, he left Germany in 2018, but was extradited by Italy a year later on the basis of a second European arrest warrant issued for a drug offence.

The Braunsweig Public Prosecutor’s Office, which is now also dealing with the case of the British girl because this was the city where Brueckner had his last residence, has been investigating what happened for almost 5 years in collaboration with the Portuguese and British judicial authorities. The case has crossed with another in Germany. In early 2015, a girl similar to Maddie disappeared without a trace in Saxony-Anhalt.. Brueckner lived at that time only 90 kilometers away.