Christian Brückner: the suspect in the disappearance of Madeleine McCann

A convicted German sex offender has been named an official suspect by Portuguese prosecutors investigating the disappearance of Madeleine McCann.

Although they did not name the person in question, prosecutors said they were acting on requests from German authorities. German tabloid picture then reported that the suspect is Christian Brückner, who is currently serving a rape sentence in Germany.

Who is Brueckner?

Brückner, who is referred to as Christian B in much German media due to the country’s strict data protection laws, was born in Germany in 1976 but moved to Portugal as a teenager. He lived in the Algarve between 1995 and 2007, where he broke into hotels and holiday apartments, according to court documents Reuters in 2020.

He also “faked passports” and was “caught stealing diesel from a Portuguese port”. The guard reported. He is believed to have been living a transient lifestyle at the time of McCann’s disappearance in May 2007, when he was 30.

He was a “drifter” and a “paedo”, The sun said, and has previous convictions for sex crimes against young girls. He has also been “linked to the disappearances of several children over the past 25 years, including that of a six-year-old boy in Portugal in 1996 and a five-year-old girl in Germany in 2015”.

Belgian authorities “have also linked him to the murder of missing 16-year-old Carola Titze,” the newspaper added. She “disappeared while on holiday in De Haan in 1996”.

He is currently serving a prison sentence for drug offenses in Germany and was also sentenced to seven years in prison in 2005 for raping a 72-year-old woman in Portugal.

Is he the kidnapper?

prosecutors in Germany identified him as a suspect in the McCann case in 2020. But it wasn’t until yesterday that he was declared a ‘formal suspect’.

It is speculated that Brückner was only named as an official suspect to avoid the statute of limitations running out in Portugal. Portuguese law states that crimes punishable by more than 10 years in prison, including kidnapping and murder, must be tried within 15 years.

Friedrich Fulscher, Brückner’s lawyer, told Bild that “the step taken by the Portuguese authorities should not be overestimated” because “this measure is a procedural trick to stop the imminent statute of limitations in a few days”.

Last week Brückner wrote to the Daily Mail He said he was not questioned by German authorities about Madeleine’s disappearance.

He added that “it is evident that the German authorities, and in particular the Ministry of Justice, are providing the media with information about me that is likely to cast contempt on me”.

In the UK, Scotland Yard announced last month that it would complete its 11-year investigation into the disappearance of Madeleine later this year.