{"id":142655,"date":"2025-09-17T04:50:06","date_gmt":"2025-09-17T04:50:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/142655\/"},"modified":"2025-09-17T04:50:06","modified_gmt":"2025-09-17T04:50:06","slug":"main-suspect-in-madeleine-mccann-case-due-to-be-released-from-german-prison-germany","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/142655\/","title":{"rendered":"Main suspect in Madeleine McCann case due to be released from German prison | Germany"},"content":{"rendered":"

The main suspect in the disappearance of Madeleine McCann<\/a> is expected to be freed on Wednesday as German authorities admit they no longer have legal justification to hold him in jail.<\/p>\n

Christian Br\u00fcckner, 49, is due to be released from prison in Sehnde, northern Germany<\/a>, after serving a sentence for the rape of an American woman, then 72 years old, in Portugal in 2005.<\/p>\n

The rape took place in Praia da Luz, the holiday resort on the southern Portuguese coast where the three-year-old British toddler disappeared 18 months later.<\/p>\n

German prosecutors say that Br\u00fcckner, a German national, remains their prime suspect in the disappearance, which they are treating as a murder inquiry. British police call him a suspect in their investigation, which they continue to treat as a missing-persons case.<\/p>\n

Madeleine went missing on 3 May 2007 while on holiday with her parents. She vanished from the ground-floor apartment where the family was staying, while her parents were at a restaurant close by. Her young twin siblings had been in the room with her.<\/p>\n

Hans Christian Wolters, a lead investigator in the case, reiterated in a recent interview his belief that Br\u00fcckner was responsible for the girl\u2019s disappearance. \u201cWe believe that he is responsible for the disappearance of Madeleine McCann and that he killed Madeleine McCann,\u201d he said in a recent statement.<\/p>\n

Prosecutors have urged authorities to ensure Br\u00fcckner is fitted with an electronic ankle tag so that his movements can be tracked, but it is unclear whether the court will agree to this. They have also requested that Br\u00fcckner relinquish his passport and report regularly to authorities, citing fears that he might try to leave the country.<\/p>\n

German police have been investigating Br\u00fcckner since 2017. State prosecutors have said they have circumstantial evidence indicating his possible involvement in Madeleine\u2019s disappearance. These include that his mobile phone was on and logged in in the area where she vanished, and the sworn testimony of three witnesses who say he confessed to them.<\/p>\n

After being alerted about Br\u00fcckner following a TV crime programme in Germany that called for information a decade after the child\u2019s disappearance, the federal criminal police office named him as a suspect in 2020. They revealed he had convictions going back decades for child sex offences and other crimes, including drug trafficking, burglary and petty theft.<\/p>\n

Br\u00fcckner had lived in the Algarve region of Portugal between 1995 and 2007, and had worked at the Praia da Luz resort as a pool maintenance assistant.<\/p>\n

Last autumn, Br\u00fcckner was cleared by a court <\/a>in the northern German city of Braunschweig of several unrelated sexual offences, alleged to have occurred between 2000 and 2017. He has consistently denied any involvement in Madeleine\u2019s disappearance.<\/p>\n

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Ahead of Br\u00fcckner\u2019s release, his lawyer, Friedrich F\u00fclscher, said in a statement that no comment would be made to the media outside the prison either by him or Br\u00fcckner.<\/p>\n

Br\u00fcckner has refused a request<\/a> by British authorities, made through an \u201cinternational letter of request\u201d, for an interview on his release.<\/p>\n

DCI Mark Cranwell, a senior investigating officer for London\u2019s Metropolitan police, said the request had been \u201crefused by the suspect\u201d. He added that the Met would \u201cnevertheless continue to pursue any viable lines of inquiry\u201d.<\/p>\n

After completing his seven-anda-half-year sentence for the 2005 rape, Br\u00fcckner had been expected to stay behind bars until January 2026 because of his owing \u20ac1,447 (\u00a31,253) in fines for a separate offence. However, a former police officer who had worked on the investigation into Br\u00fcckner paid the fine because, she has said, she \u201cfelt sorry\u201d for him. She has since said she made a mistake.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The main suspect in the disappearance of Madeleine McCann is expected to be freed on Wednesday as German…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":142656,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[49,50,51,47,52,48],"class_list":["post-142655","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/142655","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=142655"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/142655\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/142656"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=142655"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=142655"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=142655"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}