Madeleine McCann suspects Christian Brueckner’s former friend said the German seemed ‘strange’ and wanted to brag about his burglary skills.
Convicted rapist Brueckner, 47, returned to court today for his continuing sex crimes trial in Germany, which is unrelated to the British three-year-old’s 2007 disappearance.
He previously told MailOnline that the ongoing case against him was ‘ridiculous’.
Among the witnesses to testify at the hearing was former friend Christian Post, who used to associate with Brueckner in Portugal.
Post told the court he found CDs in Brueckner’s home with labels on them suggesting they contained child and animal pornography.
Madeleine McCann suspect Christian Brueckner has returned to court for her continuing sex crimes trial in Germany (pictured)
Dressed in his trademark creased gray suit, which he has worn to all the previous hearings, he shook hands and smiled with his legal team as he was led into court
Convicted rapist Brueckner, 47, who previously told MailOnline the case was ‘ridiculous’, arrived amid heavy security just after 9pm. 10 local time
Among the witnesses to give evidence at the hearing was former friend Christian Post (pictured), who used to associate with Brueckner in Portugal
Music technician and part-time teacher Post said in his evidence that he first met Brueckner in around 2002 or 2003 and remembered him as ‘odd’.
He said: ‘I noticed that for a relatively young man he was dressed rather oddly with a jacket which didn’t really suit the type of person he was.
‘This was my first impression. For me, this combination didn’t quite fit. This was my personal visual impression.’
Post told the court he had met Brueckner ‘between five and ten times’ in the Portuguese coastal city of Lagos, where the convicted rapist worked as a waiter.
He described how he had seen ‘piles of papers and passports’ at Brueckner’s home and recalled how he had boasted to him about his burglary and entry skills in the Algarve, where Madeleine disappeared from while on holiday in 2007.
It is believed Madeleine was taken from her family’s holiday home while her parents were at a nearby restaurant.
Post said: ‘He said that during the night he was active in Praia da Luz. He said he would climb buildings when the windows were open and take things.’
As he spoke, Brueckner – wearing an open-necked shirt – listened intently but showed no emotion, occasionally glancing down at a file he held on his lap.
Post also described how he found sickening child pornography on CDs that he had been asked by Brueckner to clean out of his home in Portugal while Brueckner was in prison in Germany.
He said: ‘The bag was packed with some stuff but I wasn’t interested in looking inside but it was clear from the labels on the CDs what was on them which suggested to me that there were things involved young people.
‘But I only saw it quickly and I found it far too shabby. So I threw these away. I did not see them in person. I just saw the label and then made a decision.
“Some were pornographic practices,” Post told the court. ‘One thing that I noticed involved dogs, so this is (one) thing that I then threw away.
“I don’t remember the full details, but there were some things like this and I didn’t want to risk transporting something like that.”
Post has since moved to Cambodia.
Brueckner is the prime suspect in the disappearance of Madeleine McCann, the three-year-old British girl who disappeared on May 3, 2007, while on vacation with her family in Portugal
Pictured: The holiday complex where the McCann family were staying in Portugal’s Algarve region in May 2007 when their three-year-old daughter disappeared without a trace
His comments came in a three-hour video ruling he gave in December, which was played in court after he told officials it was ‘too far’ for him to fly.
Brueckner arrived today amid heavy security just after 10 local time.
Armed police stood guard outside the spa in Braunschweig, while those entering the building were put through airport-style security checks.
Dressed in his trademark creased gray suit, which he has worn to all the previous hearings, he shook hands and smiled with his legal team as he was led into court.
Brueckner is currently behind bars after being convicted of raping a 72-year-old American woman in the Algarve in 2005, just a few kilometers from where Madeleine would disappear two years later.
He is currently on trial in Braunschweig for three rapes and two sexual assaults allegedly committed in Portugal between 2000 and 2017.
Meanwhile, German police are convinced he kidnapped and killed Madeleine and the investigation continues years after her disappearance – with the latest high-profile searches taking place at Lake Arade 30 miles from Praia da Luz.
Brueckner himself has repeatedly denied any involvement in her disappearance, and his lawyer, Friedrich Fulscher, has hit out at the accusations – warning they risk muddying the waters of Brueckner’s disjointed continuing trial.
He told the court last month that the pedophile had been under ‘worldwide media fire’ since he was named by German police as a key suspect in Madeleine’s disappearance in 2020 – with no charges against him yet.
Brueckner’s latest court appearance came days after armed police in Germany were seen at an allotment garden searching for a man who may hold vital information about Madeleine’s disappearance.
The man said to have connections Brueckner.
Gun-wielding officers gathered at a small house on the Kennelblick housing estate in Braunschweig, Lower Saxony, last week and spent an hour outside the property owned by a man named Ralph H.
The 56-year-old is said to have worked closely with Brueckner; the couple rented back-to-back bungalows on the Kennelblick site.
Christian Brueckner was named the main suspect in Madeleine’s disappearance in 2020
Kennelblick allotments in Braunschweig, Lower Saxony, Germany, where Ralph H is said to live and was a neighbor of Christian Brueckner
He is said to have admitted robbing the home with the pedophile and police are said to want to speak to him so they can ask him questions about Madeline, who would now be 20 years old.
Informants within the BKA – the Bundeskriminalamt, Germany’s answer to the FBI – say they ‘urgently’ need to speak to him about his relationship with Brueckner.
It is understood that Ralph H is not a suspect in her disappearance but may have information that could help investigators.
More to follow…