Madeleine McCann suspect faces 15-year prison term in unrelated trial

Christian Brückner (left) has been on trial in Braunschweig since February

German prosecutors have said the prime suspect in Madeleine McCann’s disappearance should face 15 years in prison for sex crimes unrelated to the missing girl.

Christian Brückner, 47, has been on trial since February charged with three counts of rape and two counts of sexual abuse.

The allegations date back to between 2000 and 2017 and are not related to McCann’s case, for which Brückner denies involvement and has never been charged.

On Wednesday, chief prosecutor Ute Lindemann described Brückner as a "dangerous, psychopathic sadist" and said he should be placed in preventive detention after serving his sentence.

The statute of limitations was found to have expired on one of the rape allegations, meaning it was not included in the prosecution's sentencing demands.

However, Lindemann called for a sentence of 13 years in total for the remaining two counts of rape, and two years in total for the two counts of sexual abuse.

She said there was a "high degree of certainty" that Brückner would reoffend.

Madeleine McCann vanished from a Portuguese holiday apartment on 3 May 2007

Brückner's lawyers have previously said the case is based on "very shaky foundations".

They have also questioned whether their client can get a fair trial after being publicly linked, by prosecutors, to the disappearance of Madeleine. He was named as the main suspect in the McCann case in 2020.

Three-year-old Madeleine McCann disappeared during a family holiday in Praia da Luz, Algarve, Portugal, in 2007.

It became one of the most high-profile missing person cases, but her whereabouts are still unknown.

Warning: You may find some of the details of the case distressing

Brückner's trial is being heard by judges - not a jury - in Braunschweig, in the north-western state of Lower Saxony, because that was where Brückner was last officially registered.

The charges are for five alleged separate offences:

• The rape of a woman aged 70 to 80 in her holiday apartment in Portugal between 2000 and 2006

• The rape of a girl of at least 14 at a house where he lived in Praia de Luz between 2000 and 2006

• The rape of an Irish woman whose holiday flat he is alleged to have broken into from her balcony in Praia da Rocha in 2004. In all three rape cases, Brückner is accused of whipping the victim and filming the assaults

• Sexual abuse of a 10-year-old German girl on a beach in Salema in 2007

• Forcing an 11-year-old girl to watch a sex act at a playground in Bartolomeu de Messines during a festival in 2017

A key witness told the court that he had seen videos of Brückner raping an elderly woman and a young girl.

Christian Brückner has never been charged in relation to Madeleine McCann and denies any involvement

In July, Brückner’s defence team won a bid to cancel an arrest warrant against him.

However, this was a technicality, since he is already serving a seven-year jail sentence for raping a 72-year-old American tourist in Praia da Luz in 2005.

The prosecution criticised the move, while Brückner’s lawyer Friedrich Fülscher said it was a clear sign he would be acquitted.

This trial may determine whether Brückner remains behind bars when his current sentence ends.

Who is Christian Brückner?

Brückner was born in Bavaria, Germany, in December 1976.

It is reported that he spent time in care while growing up.

He has previously been convicted for drug, theft and child sex offences.

Prosecutors have said he lived “more or less permanently” in the Algarve between 1995 and 2007.

In the immediate wake of Madeleine McCann's disappearance, he was not closely investigated.

But he was named as a suspect by German investigators in June 2020 in what they have classed as a murder inquiry.

Portuguese authorities subsequently named him as a formal suspect, or an arguido, in 2022.

No charges have ever been brought against him and full details of the German investigation have never been released.