Christian Brückner, the convicted sex offender labelled since 2020 as the ‘prime suspect’ in the high-profile case of Madeleine McCann’s disappearance has been released from prison in Germany, where he was serving a sentence for the rape of an elderly American woman, in Praia da Luz, Algarve, two years before Madeleine went missing from the same holiday village.
According to reports, 48-year-old Brückner was driven out of Sehnde prison by his lawyer early this morning in a black Audi, with a police escort.
The Audi had darkened windows, thus Brückner was not visible.
In spite of his repeated insistence that he had nothing to do with the disappearance, or anything else, of Madeleine McCann, it is being reported that Brückner has been fitted with an electronic ankle tag, and has been made to surrender his passport to German authorities.
A police source has admitted to the BBC that they “don’t have any knowledge about where Christian B is going to go. This is happening in co-operation with his lawyers,”
His lawyers have also refused to say, says the BBC – almost certainly because, as his defence attorney Friedrich Fülscher said some years ago, Brückner’s life outside jail will be incredibly challenging, given the dissemination of images of how he looks, and the global notoriety of this case.
Brückner was made an ‘arguido’ (official suspect) in May of 2022 – almost two years after German police made their historic claim that Madeleine McCann was dead, and they knew who “did the deed”.
Since that time, the clock has been ticking on how long authorities have to come with evidence that could lead to a conviction.
According to legal experts in Portugal, police have half the period of the legal time limit for prosecution to present their proof that he is the man responsible for snatching Madeleine on May 3, 2007.
The 15-year statute of limitations for further arrests in this case has long since expired. Thus Brückner is both the ‘principal suspect’ and the final suspect who could be charged in this case, and the time for pressing those charges runs out on November 3, 2029.
It is unclear whether German authorities are hoping to keep Brückner on an electronic tag, and prevented from leaving Germany, until that time. The Resident will try and find out what kind of limits on his not-so-complete release have been set.
Madeleine vanished from a holiday apartment in Praia da Luz while her parents were dining in a nearby restaurant.
The case has caused endless column inches, not least for the high profile court battle between the missing child’s parents and the initial lead investigator, Gonçalo Amaral, who wrote a book on his inconvenient theory that Madeleine had, in fact, never been snatched at all.
Over the years, there have been numerous high-profile police searches, initially conducted by British police – who have spent well over €15 million investigating the case – and later by German counterparts. All these searches have ended up yielding ‘nothing of interest’, in spite of the media hype surrounding them.
German prosecutors have pointed to evidence in their possession – including mobile phone data – indicating that Brückner may have been in the area when Madeleine vanished, but all of this is, in the final analysis, circumstantial (and they are well aware of this), hence why there have been no charges.
Brückner has been variously described in the past as “a drifter, a petty criminal, a convicted sex offender and a pedophile”. He has several previous convictions along these lines, but has always maintained that he had nothing to do with the disappearance of Madeleine McCann. The German theory has been built, Brückner’s lawyer told Sky News many years ago, “from the worst witness you could get”.
