<\/p>\n
\nAn undated handout photograph released by the Metropolitan Police in London of Madeleine McCann who went missing in 2007. (File photo)
\nPhoto: AFP \/ Metropolitan Police handout\n<\/p>\n
The German suspect in the Madeleine McCann disappearance case has been released from prison.<\/p>\n
Christian Brueckner is the main suspect in the 2007 disappearance of the British toddler.<\/p>\n
He had been serving a seven-year sentence in Germany for an unrelated sex crime – the rape of a 72-year-old woman in Portugal’s Algarve region, where Madeleine went missing.<\/p>\n
Prosecutors first named Brueckner as a suspect in 2020, while he was already behind bars for the rape of the woman.<\/p>\n
Madeleine went missing on May 3, 2007, while on holiday with her family in the Algarve town of Praia da Luz, sparking a frenzied search and gaining the attention of the world’s media.<\/p>\n
Brueckner lived in Portugal’s Algarve region at the time the three-year-old vanished. She has never been found.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
\nA police mug shot of Christian Brueckner. (File photo)
\nPhoto: Getty Images \/ Italian police\n<\/p>\n
Earlier this week, police in the United Kingdom said Brueckner refused to be interviewed.<\/p>\n
“We have requested an interview with this German suspect, but \u2026 it was subsequently refused by the suspect,” senior investigating officer from Britain’s Metropolitan Police, DCI Mark Cranwell, said in a statement on Monday.<\/p>\n
Brueckner’s lawyer, Friedrich F\u00fclscher, has said charges would have been filed against his client long ago if there had been sufficient evidence.<\/p>\n
The state court in Hildesheim, Germany, has said it cannot legally disclose whether he will have to fulfil any conditions after his release.<\/p>\n
But F\u00fclscher confirmed to regional public broadcaster NDR that his client will be required to wear an electronic foot tag, report regularly to probation services and give up his passport.<\/p>\n
Brueckner still faces an October 27 court date in Oldenburg in north-western Germany in a case in which he is accused of insulting a prison employee.<\/p>\n
A district court in the city sentenced him to six weeks in prison for that, but the defence has appealed.<\/p>\n
– ABC<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"An undated handout photograph released by the Metropolitan Police in London of Madeleine McCann who went missing in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":27550,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[48,47,42,43,49,46,44,45,40,38,41,39],"class_list":{"0":"post-27549","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-audio","9":"tag-current-affairs","10":"tag-headlines","11":"tag-news","12":"tag-podcasts","13":"tag-public-radio","14":"tag-radio-new-zealand","15":"tag-rnz","16":"tag-top-news","17":"tag-top-stories","18":"tag-topnews","19":"tag-topstories"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27549","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=27549"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27549\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/27550"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27549"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27549"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27549"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}