The German investigation into the 2007 disappearance of Britain’s young child Madeleine McCann could continue until next year, according to the state prosecutor in Braunschweig.
Officials in Faro, Portugal, said on Thursday that convicted rapist Christian Bruckner, 44, was an Arguido or “official suspect” – the first time Portuguese authorities have officially identified a suspect after Kate and Gary McCann, the young child’s parents. . , were declared as such in 2007. They were officially released from suspicion in 2008.
Officials in the northern German city of Oldenburg, where Bruckner spent seven years raping an American pensioner in 2005 in the same part of Portugal’s Algarve region where Madeleine went missing, confirmed on Friday that they had informed the prisoner of his new status.
Madeleine’s parents said they “welcome the news that the Portuguese authorities have declared a German an arguido.” They said in a statement: “Although the possibility may be small, we have not given up hope that Madeleine is still alive and we will reunite with her.
However, Braunschweig Public Prosecutor Hans Christian Walters, who is investigating Bruckner for Madeleine’s disappearance and four other alleged crimes since 2020, said Portuguese news was unlikely to show a breakthrough in the 15-year case.
“We note the message from Faro, but it does not significantly affect our own work,” Walters said. Asked if Bruckner could be indicted in Portugal and extradited from Germany, Walters said he believed it was “unlikely to be indicted in Portugal”.
May 3 marks the 15th anniversary of Madeleine’s disappearance from her bed in a holiday apartment in the resort of Praia da Luz, and Portugal has a 15-year statute of limitations for crimes with a maximum sentence of 10 years or more.
The arguido classification “seems to have procedural experience in Portugal,” Walters said. “In this way, obsolescence can be avoided.”
Bruckner’s lawyer, Friedrich Fulcher, told the German newspaper Bild that the Portuguese decision was a “procedural trick”.
German police said in June 2020 that Madeleine was presumed dead and that Bruckner was probably responsible for her disappearance. However, British officers continued to treat him as a missing person and her parents “still hope” Madeleine is alive. .
Germany, unlike Portugal, has no statute of limitations for murder, and the public prosecutor in Braunschweig is investigating Bruckner for five separate alleged crimes.
These include three cases of rape and two cases of child abuse, the most recent being in 2017, when Bruckner allegedly exposed himself and masturbated in front of a group of children.
Walters said his office would announce the next step in a possible prosecution in late May, but “the end of our investigation into the McCann case is not yet in sight” and could continue in 2023.
If Bruckner is charged with other alleged crimes in Germany, possibly in the late summer or early fall, he will either have to personally agree to be tried in Germany or Portugal, or the prosecution will have to reissued extradition documents from Italy, where the suspect was last arrested in September 2018, a trial that could take between two weeks and several months.
If the suspect in the McCann case was to be indicted in Portugal, the Portuguese authorities would have to take the same bureaucratic step.
Different national prosecutors in Europe can investigate crimes in parallel, although EU legal agreements are designed to avoid people being prosecuted for the same crimes more than once.
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