Madeleine McCann suspect cleared of rape charges in separate trial

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

Christian Brückner, 47, was acquitted of carrying out five offences in Portugal between 2000 and 2017. He is already serving a seven-year jail term 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 defence team had argued he should be cleared because of a lack of evidence, although prosecutors had called for the court in Braunschweig in northern Germany to impose an additional 15-year jail term.

Brückner’s existing seven-year jail term imposed by the court in Braunschweig in 2019 for raping an American pensioner ends next September, according to prosecutors.

His latest trial began in February, and during the summer the court lifted an arrest warrant in connection with the case, which was seen by some observers as an early indication that Brückner could be acquitted.

His lawyer, Friedrich Fülscher, said on Monday that acquittal was “the only correct outcome of the case” because two of the rape victims, a teenager and an elderly woman, had never been identified.

A key witness had earlier told the trial that he had broken into Brückner’s home in Portugal and found videos involving the rape of a girl and a woman aged 70 to 80.

An Irish woman, Hazel Behan, later told the court she had been raped when she was 20 by a masked man who broke into her flat in Portugal in 2004. She waived her anonymity for the trial and described how she had never forgotten Brückner’s bright eyes, which she said had “bored into my skull”.

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

Prosecutors have said they will appeal against Tuesday’s verdict, although previously they said one of the rape charges should be dropped.

They have sought to ensure Brückner remains in preventive detention when his jail term ends next year.