Main suspect in Madeleine McCann case released from German prison

Original article by Kate Connolly in Berlin

The main suspect in the disappearance of Madeleine McCann was freed on Wednesday as German authorities said they no longer had legal justification to hold him in jail.

Christian Brückner, 49, was released from prison in Sehnde, northern Germany, after serving a sentence for the rape of an American woman, then 72 years old, in Portugal in 2005, journalists at the scene reported.

The rape took place in Praia da Luz, the holiday resort on the southern Portuguese coast where the three-year-old British toddler disappeared 18 months later.

Brückner was driven away from the prison entrance by his lawyer, Friedrich Fülscher, in a black Audi A6 at 9.14am local time, accompanied by a police escort. Brückner, who police confirmed was covered in a blanket and sitting on the back seat, could not be seen owing to tinted windows. The car travelled northwards, taking him to an unknown destination.

German prosecutors say that Brückner, a German national, remains their prime suspect in the disappearance, which they are treating as a murder inquiry. British police call him a suspect in their investigation, which they continue to treat as a missing-persons case.

State prosecutors responsible for the investigation confirmed to German media on Wednesday morning that Brückner would have to wear an electronic ankle tag so that his movements could be tracked. His lawyer had tried to object to this, they said. He will also have to surrender his passport, is forbidden from travelling abroad and must declare a permanent place of residence, which he may not leave without permission.

However, his lawyers have said they plan to appeal against the supervision order. Philipp Marquort told Der Spiegel: “This is the public prosecutor’s attempt to keep him in a kind of pretrial detention where they have access to him at any time.”

Madeleine went missing on 3 May 2007 while on holiday with her parents. She vanished from the ground-floor apartment where the family was staying, while her parents were at a restaurant close by. Her young twin siblings had been in the room with her.

Hans Christian Wolters, a lead investigator in the case, reiterated in a recent interview his belief that Brückner was responsible for the girl’s disappearance. “We believe that he is responsible for the disappearance of Madeleine McCann and that he killed Madeleine McCann,” he said in a recent statement.

Wolters told the AFP news agency last year that he believed Brückner was “fundamentally dangerous”. “He has not undergone any therapy or similar treatment in prison, which means that, from our point of view, we must assume that he will reoffend,” Wolters said.

German police have been investigating Brückner since 2017. State prosecutors have said they have circumstantial evidence indicating his possible involvement in Madeleine’s disappearance. These include that his mobile phone was on and logged in in the area where she vanished, and the sworn testimony of three witnesses who say he confessed to them.

After being alerted about Brückner, following a TV crime programme in Germany that called for information a decade after the child’s disappearance, the federal criminal police office named him as a suspect in 2020. They revealed he had convictions going back decades for child sexual abuse and other crimes, including drug trafficking, burglary and petty theft.

Brückner had lived in the Algarve region of Portugal between 1995 and 2007, and had worked at the Praia da Luz resort as a pool maintenance assistant.

The investigation has also involved several searches of land and property connected to Brückner, in Portugal and Germany.

Last October, Brückner was cleared by a court in the northern German city of Braunschweig of several unrelated sexual offences, alleged to have occurred between 2000 and 2017. He has consistently denied any involvement in Madeleine’s disappearance.

The public prosecutor’s office appealed against this verdict, and a review is still pending by the federal court of justice.

He is due back in court in Oldenburg in October for a hearing into an incident in which he is accused of insulting a member of prison staff.

A court hearing is also listed for 27 October in Oldenburg in north-west Germany, to deal with a case in which he is accused of insulting a prison employee.

Before Brückner’s release, Fülscher said in a statement that no comment would be made to the media outside the prison either by him or his client. Brückner has refused a request by British authorities, made through an “international letter of request”, for an interview on his release.

DCI Mark Cranwell, a senior investigating officer for London’s Metropolitan police, said the request had been “refused by the suspect”. He added that the Met would “nevertheless continue to pursue any viable lines of inquiry”.

After completing his seven-and-a-half-year sentence for the 2005 rape, Brückner had been expected to stay behind bars until January 2026 because he owed €1,447 (£1,253) in fines for a separate offence. However, a former police officer who had worked on the investigation into Brückner paid the fine because she said she “felt sorry” for him. She has since said she made a mistake.