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31st Jan 2022

Madeleine McCann suspect releases statement from prison amid intensive investigations

Charlie Herbert

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Christian Brueckner continues to proclaim his innocence.

The prime suspect in the abduction of Madeleine McCann has claimed he could not have kidnapped the child because he was a drug dealer at the time and wanted to avoid the attention of the police.

In 2020, Christian Brueckner was named as the prime suspect in the case looking into McCann’s 2007 disappearance, with German prosecutors convinced he is the man responsible.

He is currently serving a seven-year prison sentence for raping a 73-year-old American woman at her home on the Algarve.

However, no charges have been able to be brought forward against him in relation to the Madeleine McCann case.

A new documentary from German TV channel SAT.1 entitled ‘New Clues In The Case Of Missing Madeleine McCann’ has revealed that 44-year-old Brueckner claims he was lying low at the time when the three-year-old went missing because he was a drug dealer and was trying to avoid police attention.

The documentary details a series of letters exchanged between investigative reporter Jutta Rabe and Brueckner, who is currently being held in a prison in Oldenburg, near Bremen.

In one of the letters, alongside admitting he worked as a drug dealer, Brueckner wrote:

“I was never caught by the police because I followed a few key principles.

“Where possible, only driving during the day so that my battered ‘hippy bus’ didn’t attract attention, only driving on the roads I needed to and, most importantly, never provoking the police.

“So that means not committing any crimes, certainly not abducting anyone.”

In July 2021, Brueckner wrote another letter, received by Bild, which read:

“Charging an accused is one thing. Something completely different – namely, it is an unbelievable scandal – when a public prosecutor starts a public campaign for prejudice before a court case is opened.

“Freedom of expression is not a basic right so that everyone can say and write what they want. Freedom of expression does not protect the majority.

“It protects the minority. It does not protect the most logical, most convincing or most popular views, but rather the outsider position.

“I call on the Brunswick public prosecutors (Hans Christian) Wolters and (Ute) Lindemann to resign from their offices.

“Both are proving worldwide through my arbitrary condemnation in the past and through their scandalous pre-denial campaign in the present against me as an innocent person that they are not suitable for an office as a lawyer for the honest and trusting German people and you bring shame onto the judiciary.”

McCann went missing from her holiday home in Portugal on 3 May, 2007, just days before her fourth birthday.

Her parents, Kate and Gerry, had gone out for tapas with friends while Madeleine and siblings were in bed. When they got back, she had disappeared and has not been seen since.

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