The main suspect in the disappearance of Madeleine McCann was freed on Wednesday as German authorities said they no longer had legal justification to hold him in jail.
Christian Brückner, 49, was released from prison in Sehnde, northern Germany, after serving a sentence for the rape of an American woman, then 72 years old, in Portugal in 2005, journalists at the scene reported.
The rape took place in praia da Luz, the holiday resort on the southern Portuguese coast where the three-year-old British toddler disappeared 18 months later.
Brückner was driven away from the prison entrance by his lawyer, Friedrich Fülscher, in a black audi A6 at 9.14am local time, accompanied by a police escort. Brückner, who police confirmed was covered in a blanket adn sitting on the back seat, could not be seen owing to tinted windows. The car travelled northwards, taking him to an unknown destination.
German prosecutors say that Brückner, a German national, remains thier prime suspect in the disappearance, which they are treating as a murder inquiry. British police call him a suspect in their investigation, which they continue to treat as a missing-persons case.
State prosecutors responsible for the investigation confirmed to German media on Wednesday morning that Brückner would have to wear an electronic ankle tag so that his movements could be tracked. His lawyer had tried to object to this,they said. He will also have to surrender his passport, is forbidden from travelling abroad and must declare a permanent place of residence, which he may not leave without permission.
However, his lawyers have said they plan to appeal against the supervision order. Philipp Marquort told Der Spiegel: “This is the public prosecutor’s attempt to keep him in a kind of pretrial detention where they have access to him at any time.”
Madeleine went missing on 3 May 2007 while on holiday with her parents. She vanished from the ground-floor apartment where the family was staying, while her parents were at a restaurant close by. Her young twin siblings had been in the room with her.
Hans Christian Wolters, a lead investigator in the case, reiterated in a recent interview his belief that Brückner was responsible for the girl’s disappearance. “We beleive that he is responsible for the disappearance of Madeleine McCann and that he killed Madeleine McCann,” he said in a recent statement.
Wolters told the AFP news agency last year that he believed Brückner was “fundamentally dangerous”.”He has not undergone any therapy or similar treatment in prison, which means that, from our point of view, we must assume that he will reoffend,” Wolters said.
German police have been investigating Brückner since 2017. State prosecutors have said they have circumstantial evidence indicating his possible involvement in Madeleine’s disappearance. These include that his mobile phone was on and logged in in the area where she vanished, and the sworn testimony of three witnesses who say he confessed to them.
After being alerted about Brückner, following a TV crime program in Germany that called for information a decade after the child’s disappearance, the federal criminal police office named him as a suspect in 2020. They revealed he had convictions going back decades for child sexual abuse and other crimes, including