A rape charge against the main suspect in the Madeleine McCann investigation has been dropped after a German court said it did not have jurisdiction over the case.
Christian Brueckner was due to go on trial for an alleged rape in Portugal but a court in the city of Braunschweig threw out the case, his lawyer said, Bild newspaper reported. The rape allegation is not linked to Madeleine’s case.
German prosecutors last year said they had charged Brueckner with several sexual offences they believe he committed in Portugal between 28 December 2000, and 11 June 2017. The court did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Brueckner first came up in the Madeleine investigation in 2020 and he was officially named as a suspect last year.
Three-year-old Madeleine disappeared from the bed of her holiday apartment while her parents and family friends dined 180 feet away.
Her two-year-old twin siblings were also in the apartment she went missing from. Madeleine’s parents, Kate and Gerry McCann, have been searching for answers ever since.
The Metropolitan Police took over the investigation, Operation Grange, in 2011 but they hit dead ends. Brueckner’s emergence in the case was the first major breakthrough since 2007.
He is described as being about 6ft tall, slim and white with short blond hair.
Already in prison in Germany for the rape and murder of a 72-year-old woman, he was charged with multiple sex offences which were alleged to have taken place between 2000 and 2007.
Police in Germany claimed to have “concrete evidence” that Madeleine was dead but this has not been confirmed.
A spokesperson from the Braunschweig prosecutor’s office previously said: “The accused is the same person against whom charges were brought in connection with the disappearance of the then three-year-old British girl Madeleine Beth McCann.
“Specifically, the accused is charged with three offences of aggravated rape and two offences of sexual abuse of children.
“The investigation into the disappearance of Madeleine McCann continues.”
The charges mentioned do not relate to the McCann case. But in May German police claimed to have found new evidence linked to Madeleine inside a van belonging to Brueckner.
Brueckner had reportedly been using a yellow and white VW T3 Westfalia campervan in and around Praia da Luz – the Algarve resort where the McCanns were holidaying at the time Madeleine vanished.
German prosecutors said telecomms data showed Brueckner received a phone call on 3 May 2007 near the Praia da Luz holiday apartment from which the three-year-old went missing. He claimed to have been miles from the scene with a young German woman.
Brueckner, who has always denied any involvement in Madeleine’s disappearance, insists he drove the woman, who was on holiday with her parents, to the airport in Faro for her return flight home the following day.
