Madeleine McCann suspect Christian Brueckner acquitted in unrelated German rape trial

ITV News Correspondent Carrie Davis goes over the background of the Brueckner case

Madeleine McCann suspect Christian Brueckner has been found not guilty of unrelated sexual offences while on trial in Germany.

The 47-year-old German national had been on trial at the Braunschweig state court since February over offences he was alleged to have committed in Portugal between 2000 and 2017.

He has been cleared of two charges rape and two of sexual abuse. He still has a year left to serve in prison due to a seven-year sentence for rape in a different case.

During the trial, his lawyer Friedrich Fülscher had pointed to what he labelled a lack of evidence and witnesses who weren't credible, suggesting that his client might not have been charged if he hadn't also been a suspect in the McCann case.

Prosecutors had argued he should be given a 15-year prison sentence and kept in preventive detention once he has served it.

Brueckner has not been charged in the McCann case, but German authorities began investigating him in June 2020 for her kidnap and murder.

The British toddler disappeared in May 2007 while on holiday in Portugal, when the then-three-year-old was left in an apartment with her younger siblings as their parents went out to dinner with friends.

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He spent many years in Portugal, including in the resort of Praia da Luz around the time the toddler went missing, but has denied any involvement in her disappearance.

He is currently serving a seven-year prison sentence after being convicted in 2019 by the Braunschweig court for the rape of a 72-year-old American woman in Portugal in 2005.

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