Suspect Madeleine McCann has dropped charges of rape in a separate case in Germany

The main suspect in the disappearance of three-year-old British girl Madeleine McCann, has been convicted by a German court of rape and sexual assault in an unrelated case.

Christian Brückner, 47, was acquitted of five crimes in Portugal between 2000 and 2017. He is currently serving seven years in prison in Germany for rape.

Brückner has not been charged in the case of Madeleine McCann, who disappeared in Portugal in 2007 and has never been found.

Brückner’s legal team argued that he should be released due to a lack of evidence, although prosecutors had asked the court in Braunschweig in northern Germany to impose an additional 15-year prison sentence.

Brückner’s current seven-year sentence, imposed by a Braunschweig court in 2019 for raping an American pensioner, expires next September, according to prosecutors.

Presiding Judge Uta Engemann said there was not enough evidence to convict him, and prosecutors said they would appeal Tuesday’s decision.

Although he spent many years in the Algarve region of Portugal, Brückner returned to Germany and was identified as a suspect by German investigators in the case of Madeleine McCann in 2020. He had been on holiday with his family in the Algarve when he disappeared from their house. Places to stay in Praia da Luz

Brückner was tried in Braunschweig as this is where he was last listed as a resident. Although unrelated to McCann’s case, his latest rape trial sparked worldwide interest when it began in February.

However, in the summer, the court lifted the arrest warrant in the case, which some observers saw as the first indication that Brückner might be released.

Brückner did not testify during the trial, but his lawyer, Friedrich Fülscher, said on Monday that the dismissal was “the only direct result of the case” because the two rape victims, a young man and an old woman, had never been identified. and the witnesses were unreliable.

A key witness had previously told the trial that he broke into Brückner’s house in Portugal and found videos that included the rape of a girl and a woman aged 70 to 80.

An Irish woman, Hazel Behan, later told a court that she was raped at the age of 20 by a masked man who broke into her flat in Portugal in 2004. He withheld his name from the case and explained that he had never forgotten Brückner’s bright eyes. , which he says is “bored in my skull”.

Ms Behan told the court she believed he was her attacker.

Earlier, the prosecutors said that one of the rape charges should be dropped.

They tried to make sure that Brückner remains in custody when his prison sentence ends next year.

However, Brückner’s defense attorney said he intends to contest the 2019 rape conviction.

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