A man under investigation over the 2007 disappearance of British girl Madeleine McCann has been acquitted of unrelated sexual offences in Germany.
Christian Brueckner was cleared at the court in Brunswick of three charges of aggravated rape and two of sexual abuse of children.
Prosecutors had argued for the German national to be handed a 15-year sentence and are expected to appeal against the decision.
Brueckner, 47, is already serving a seven-year prison term in Germany for raping a woman in 2005 in the Algarve region of Portugal where three-year-old Madeleine went missing.
He had been on trial since February over the offences he was alleged to have committed in Portugal between 2000 and 2017.
Defence lawyers said there was a lack of evidence and the witnesses were not credible.
Friedrich Fulscher, defending Brueckner, told the court that “there was never a sufficient suspicion” against his client.
Mr Fulscher also suggested Brueckner might not have been charged if he had not been a suspect in the McCann case.
A former prison cellmate of Brueckner’s had told a German court that he heard him bragging about abducting a girl in Portugal.
Romanian Laurentiu Codin shared a cell with Brüeckner in 2020 and said Brückner told him a story similar to the circumstances of Madeleine’s disappearance in 2007. Claiming that Brüeckner bragged about being in an area of Portugal “where rich people live”, Codin told Braunschweig regional court: “There was somewhere an open window, he told me this, and this was the reason why he asked me whether fingerprints could be left when he went out of the window.
“He said he went into the flat because of money and said that he didn’t find any money, but found a kid, and took the child, and that two hours, the place he was, it was then surrounded by police and dogs,” he continued.
“And then he went away, out of the area, I am just saying what he told me ... and he took the child in Portugal in his car, and in the time when the police and dogs were there at the house, he drove away, and he was gone. He asked me if the DNA from a child can be found as evidence and I answered yes.”
Prosecutors in Portugal officially declared Christian Brückner an arguido (suspect) in 2022. It is thought he visited the area around the time Madeleine went missing.
Madeleine was three years old when she disappeared from the family’s holiday apartment in Portugal’s Praia da Luz in 2007. Amelie and her twin brother, Sean, were sleeping in the same room the night Madeleine was allegedly kidnapped.
Despite the British Government dedicating millions of pounds to police investigations, Madeleine has never been found.
Here is a comprehensive look at the timeline of Madeleine McCann’s disappearance.
2007
On May 3, Madeleine’s parents Kate and Gerry left their three children asleep in their holiday apartment in Praia da Luz as they met friends for dinner.
At 9pm, Gerry walked back to the apartment, which was 100 yards away, to check on the children.
At 10pm, Kate made the same journey for another check. However, this time, Madeleine was gone.
Hotel staff and guests searched the hotel complex while the police started the investigations that night. Over the next few days hundreds of volunteers and officials joined the search.
The Portuguese police revealed they believed the girl had been abducted but remained alive and in Portugal.
A family friend of Kate and Gerry’s, who was dining with them on the night of the disappearance, revealed she’d seen a man carrying a child on the night Maddie disappeared.
On May 14, an Anglo-Portuguese property developer was arrested. He lived just 100 yards from the holiday apartment Maddie was sleeping in.
Later, in June of that year, the Portuguese officials confessed that they may have lost vital evidence. In July, the British police decided to send sniffer dogs.
On August 11, for the first time, Portuguese forces said that Madeleine might be dead.
Weeks later, in September, after talking to her parents, they also made them official suspects in their daughter’s disappearance. In a matter of days after becoming suspects, the McCanns decided to fly back to the UK with their children.
2008
In July 2008, the Portuguese police removed the McCanns and the property developer from the suspect list, while investigations continued.
The reservoir area is first checked. Portuguese lawyer Marcos Aragao Correia reportedly paid for specialist divers to check the Arade dam after he claimed to have been tipped off by criminal contacts that Madeleine’s body was in the reservoir.
2009
In May 2009, the McCanns announced they would be taking the Portuguese detective in charge of the original investigation, Goncalo Amaral, to court, after he published a book that claimed Maddie died in her family’s holiday apartment and wasn’t abducted.
In November, the Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre in Britain released a video message in seven languages that showcased what Maddie would look like two years after her disappearance.
2010
Madeleine’s parents launched a petition that asked for the Portugal and UK investigations to be reviewed after the two countries shelved their search efforts.
2011
Gerry McCann published a book about Maddie’s disappearance on what would have been her eighth birthday on May 12.
Meanwhile, following the request of the then home secretary Theresa May, which was backed by then prime minister David Cameron, Scotland Yard launched an official review of the Madeleine McCann case.
2012
In April, Scotland Yard officials revealed they believed Maddie could still be alive.
They released images of what she would look like as a nine-year-old and urged Portuguese forces to reopen the case. Portuguese officials, however, declined the request, citing a lack of fresh evidence.
2013
In July, Scotland Yard launched its own investigation into Maddie’s disappearance, called Operation Grange. Detectives revealed that they had identified 38 people of interest, including 12 Britons.
In October, the Portuguese police shared that they had reviewed their original investigation and found new lines of inquiry too and would be reopening the case.
2014
British detectives travelled to Portugal at the start of the year, and many believied they were about to make arrests. However, this didn’t happen.
In June, the authorities used specialist teams and sniffer dogs to search an area close to where Maddie was staying but nothing of interest was discovered.
In December, the detectives started questioning 11 new people.
2015
In September, the government revealed that the investigation into the disappearance of Maddie had cost the taxpayers more than £10m. A month after the announcement, Operation Grange’s team was slashed from 29 officers to four.
2017
In April, Kate and Gerry McCann marked a decade since their daughter’s disappearance by doing an interview with the BBC. They vowed that they will do “whatever it takes as long as it takes”.
2018
The government dedicated another £150,000 to the investigation, pushing the overall cost of the search to an estimated £11.75m.
2019
In March, Netflix released an eight-part docu-series about Madeleine’s disappearance.
In May, the Portuguese media revealed that the police were investigating a foreign paedophile as a suspect.
2020
In June, Scotland Yard revealed they had identified a 43-year-old German prisoner by the name of Christian Brüeckner as a suspect in Maddie’s disappearance.
The man was in the Praia de Luz resort on the night Maddie vanished. He completed a half-hour phone call shortly before she went missing on May 3, 2007, and re-registered his 1993 Jaguar the next day.
The German police revealed their investigations suggested Maddie was no longer alive.
Meanwhile, in 2020, Scotland Yard said they had now spent £12.3m of taxpayers’ money on the case and had no “definitive evidence whether Madeleine is alive or dead”.
2021
In May, Kate and Gerry share a statement on the official Find Madeleine website saying they still hope to see their daughter again one day.
2022
In April, Portuguese authorities also made Brüeckner one of their formal suspects.
In May, the McCann family said it’s essential for them to find out what happened to their daughter.
On October 11, Brüeckner was charged with three counts of rape and two charges of child sex abuse, unrelated to Maddie’s disappearance.
2023
In February, an Instagrammer claimed she was Madeleine. By April, her claims had been universally dismissed and her account suspended, and a DNA test put an end to the saga once and for all, though she controversially gained more than one million followers.
In March, an additional £302,470 of funding for Operation Grange was approved for 2022/2023, and a Home Office spokesperson confirmed that another application had been made, although they did not disclose for how much.
Brüeckner then had the unrelated charges of rape and sexual assault thrown out by a German court because he lived in a different region of the country at the time of the alleged offences.
This means legal authorities in Braunschweig have no jurisdiction over Madeleine’s case, although he remains an official suspect.
In May of that year Portuguese police along with British officers searched a reservoir on the Algarve 30 minutes from where McCann vanished.
The search was requested by German authorities as Brüeckner reportedly visited the area around the time Madeleine disappeared.
2024
A former cellmate, Laurentiu Codin, tells Braunschweig regional court that Brüeckner had raped young girls near Hanover, had abducted a girl in Portugal who sounded like Madeleine, and strangled an elderly woman.
Brüeckner is currently in prison for the September 2005 rape of a 72-year-old woman in the resort where Madeleine vanished.
In October he was cleared at the court in Brunswick of three charges of aggravated rape and two of sexual abuse of children.
He has never been charged over Madeleine’s disappearance and has denied any involvement.
