- Christian Brückner, linked to the Madeleine McCann case, acquitted of sexual offenses
- Cleared of three rapes, two sexual abuse cases in Portugal from 2000 to 2017
- His current prison sentence ends in September 2024; prosecutors sought 15 more years
The key suspect in the disappearance of three-year-old British toddler Madeleine McCann has been found not guilty of a number of sexual offences in an unrelated trial.
Christian Brückner, 47, who is already serving a seven-year sentence in Germany for rape, was cleared of three rapes and two cases of sexual abuse in Portugal between 2000 and 2017.
Brückner has not been accused in the case of Madeleine McCann, who vanished in Portugal in 2007 and was never found.
Brückner’s defence team claimed that he should be cleared due to a lack of evidence, while prosecutors urged the court in Braunschweig, northern Germany, to inflict an additional 15-year prison sentence.
Prosecutors say Brückner’s current seven-year prison sentence, imposed by a Braunschweig court in 2019, will expire in September.
His most recent trial began in February, and during the summer, the court lifted an arrest order in connection with the case, which some observers saw as an early sign that Brückner may be acquitted.
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His lawyer, Friedrich Fülscher, stated 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 not been recognized.
A key witness had previously told the trial that he broke into Brückner’s home in Portugal and discovered tapes of the rape of a girl and a woman aged 70 to 80. An Irish woman later told the court that she was raped at the age of 20 by a masked guy who broke into her flat in Portugal in 2004.
Prosecutors had informed the court that one of the rape accusations should be withdrawn, but they wanted to keep him in preventive custody until his jail sentence finished next year.
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