The suspect was finally named in 2007 The disappearance of three-year-old Madeleine McCann

A German man has been officially named as a suspect in connection with the 2007 disappearance of three-year-old British girl Madeleine McCann, who went missing while on holiday with her parents in the Algarve, Portuguese authorities announced. newspaper on Thursday.

Christian Brückner, who is currently imprisoned in Germany for the 2005 rape of a 72-year-old American woman, is now considered a “debate“Means “named suspect”.

The classification was made by German prosecutors on Wednesday, at the request of Portugal, according to AFP. Brückner, 45, faced charges of raping a 20-year-old Irish woman in 2004, three years before McCann disappeared, and is also being investigated for the rape and strangulation of a 13-year-old boy. and disappearances. of a 5-year-old girl. Over the years, he has also been charged with theft, forgery and drug trafficking.

Brückner is the first and only official suspect in the case since McCann’s parents, Kate and Gerry, were investigated by investigators in 2007 but were later cleared.

Earlier this year, a German documentary crew discovered that Brückner worked as a janitor at the resort where McCann had disappeared, the Ocean Club in Praia da Luz, in the spring of 2007, during the period. family stay.

In a statement to the German newspaper Bild, Brückner’s lawyer, Friedrich Fülscher, said that his client has yet to be charged, calling the move a “procedural trick to avoid the impending statute of limitations in the next few days”. Under Portuguese law, murder expires after 15 years; Fülscher noted that the statute of limitations in the McCann case will end on May 3.

If Brückner is formally charged with McCann’s kidnapping and murder, he could be tried in Germany or Portugal.

McCann’s body was never found. German prosecutors told Kate and Gerry McCann in 2020 that they had “concrete evidence” that their daughter was no longer alive.

As a child, Brückner was subjected to “terrible abuse” by his parents, locked in a basement for hours on end and “not even allowed to get a glass of water”, Times of London reported last year.

Brückner first emerged in 2017 as someone interested in McCann’s disappearance. Later, in a sporadic letter to a German documentary film crew, Brückner kept his innocence, writing, “If possible, only drive during the day to my ‘hippy bus’ don’t attract attention, only drive on the roads I need to and, most importantly, never provoke the police. That means no crime, certainly no kidnapping. , which seemed to me at the time as absurd as starting a nuclear war or slaughtering a chicken.”

In 2020, while waiting in a cell to appear in court on a non-drug charge, guards broke two of Brückner’s ribs while trying to restrain him in a melee. The incident is said to have started when Brückner, who allegedly refused to install the shackles, smeared yogurt on the cell wall and intentionally clogged the toilet.

That same year, German police discovered a secret cellar beneath a garden on the site where Brückner once lived. Investigators have recovered many items from space, including a bucket containing children’s toys.

Brückner continued to maintain his chastity. In June last year, he called the continuing investigation into his involvement in McCann’s death an “unbelievable scandal”.