Madeleine McCann’s parents are bracing this week as the prime suspect in their daughter’s disappearance, Christian Brueckner, faces verdict in his trial on separate sex crime charges.
Brueckner, 47, arrived at court for the final stages of his trial this morning and the judge is expected to deliver a verdict tomorrow.
Greeting warmly his three-person legal team, Brueckner, dressed in the same pale blue jacket and open-collared shirt he has worn since the trial began eight months ago, sat listening intently as his lead lawyer, Friedrich Fulscher, opened his final argument. at the Braunschweig court.
Convicted rapist and pedophile Brueckner was sensationally named as the main suspect in Madeleine’s 2007 disappearance in June 2020 by German police, but no charges have been laid since.
He is currently on trial accused of three rapes and two cases of child sexual abuse between 2000 and 2017 in Portugal, near the town of Praia da Luz in the Algarve, where Madeleine disappeared while on holiday with her parents Kate and Gerry McCann.
The charges are unrelated to the Madeleine McCann case, in which Brueckner was sensationally revealed as a suspect in 2020.
Madeleine McCann (pictured) disappeared on May 3, 2007, when she was just three years old. She has never been found. The German prosecutor’s office has named German criminal Christian Brueckner as the main suspect in her disappearance.
Brueckner is already behind bars in Germany for raping a 72-year-old American tourist in 2005 in Praia da Luz, the same Portuguese coastal town where Madeleine McCann disappeared two years later.
Kate and Gerry McCann appear in an interview from 2017. Brueckner is currently on trial accused of three rapes and two cases of child sexual abuse between 2000 and 2017 in Portugal, near the town of Praia da Luz in the Algarve, from where Madeleine He disappeared while on vacation.
Last week, prosecutor Ute Lindemann argued that he should be sentenced to 15 years in prison, calling him a “sadistic psychopath.”
In July, the prosecution was dealt a blow after the current trial judge ruled that the evidence against him in the current trial was “insufficient”, which has been widely interpreted to mean that he could be acquitted.
Mr Fulscher opened his argument by saying that “the trial should never have taken place” and then questioned the reliability of the witnesses involved.
And he added: “We are here to decide on the freedom and destiny of a person, Christian Brueckner.
‘He is accused of five crimes, but what really happened does not match what is stated.
‘That’s why the prosecution loses emotional distance from the case. This trial should never have taken place.
“If it were anyone else, based on this evidence the trial would never have taken place.”
Sources close to Brueckner’s legal team told MailOnline they expect a verdict in the case on Tuesday.
Defendant Christian Brueckner in the courtroom for a session of his trial at the court in Braunschweig, northern Germany, on September 25, 2024.
Kate and Gerry McCann, the parents of missing 3-year-old Madeleine McCann, stop to speak to the press after attending a church service in Praia da Luz.
Christian B, when he was arrested for drug trafficking in Italy in 2018
If he is acquitted, it means he could be freed next year from the seven-year prison sentence imposed on him in 2019 for raping an elderly American woman in the Algarve.
This would have enormous consequences for German prosecutors who want to attribute Madeleine’s disappearance to him; They also claim to have “concrete evidence” that she has died, but so far they have not revealed any details.
Prosecutors may request that Brueckner remain in “protective custody” if he is acquitted of the current charges, giving them time to gather more evidence in the Madeleine case.
During the current trial, Brueckner’s former cellmate, Laurentiu Codin, told the court that he had “confessed” to him that he had once kidnapped a child in Portugal.
Codin told the hearing: ‘I was looking for money. He said he didn’t find any money, but he found a child and took him.
‘He said two hours later, there were police and dogs all over the place, so he left, out of the area.
“He said he took the boy to Portugal in his car, and by the time the police and dogs were at the house, he left and left.
“He asked me if a child’s DNA can be extracted from underground bones.”
Madeleine McCann (pictured) disappeared on May 3, 2007, when she was just three years old. She has never been found. The German prosecutor’s office has named German criminal Christian Brueckner as the main suspect in her disappearance.
He is accused of three counts of rape and two counts of child sexual abuse allegedly committed in Portugal between 2000 and 2017.
German investigators sensationally named Brueckner as the prime suspect in the kidnapping of the three-year-old British boy.
Also key in the current case – and in that of Madeleine’s disappearance – are two super witnesses, Helge Busching and Manfred Seyferth, Brueckner’s former accomplices.
They claim to have found a video in Brueckner’s home in Portugal showing him masked and raping two women, although the clip has never been discovered and defense lawyers have questioned its existence.
Busching also claims Brueckner told him at a festival in Spain a year after Madeleine disappeared that it was “strange she wasn’t screaming,” which investigators also claim is vital to the case and he even told Scotland Yard in 2018. .
Met officer Mark Draycott testified in court in May how Busching had contacted them and how he had been interrogated in great secrecy in Athens about his claims after being released from a Greek prison for human trafficking.
But again his defense team has dismissed claims suggesting Busching fabricated the account.
