German suspect in Madeleine McCann case released after serving unrelated sentence

A German man under investigation in the 2007 disappearance of British toddler Madeleine McCann was released from a German prison on Wednesday after completing a seven-year sentence for an unrelated rape conviction, police said.

German authorities said the man, identified by media as Christian Brückner, left the prison in Sehnde, near Hannover, on Wednesday morning after serving a term that stemmed from a 2019 conviction in Portugal for the rape of a 72-year-old American woman.

German prosecutors opened an investigation into Brückner in June 2020 on suspicion of murder in connection with McCann’s disappearance on May 3, 2007, from an apartment in the Portuguese resort of Praia da Luz. Prosecutors have said they assume the child is dead. Investigators in Germany, Portugal and the United Kingdom have continued searches and inquiries, but Brückner has not been charged in the case and has denied any involvement.

Britain’s Metropolitan Police also named him as a suspect and said he had refused a request for an interview. The investigation by German authorities is not affected by his release, police said.

Brückner, 48, spent many years in Portugal, including in the Algarve resort where Madeleine disappeared. On the night she vanished, the three-year-old was in a holiday apartment in the same room as her younger twin siblings while her parents, Kate and Gerry McCann, were dining with friends nearby.

He was tried in 2024 on several unrelated sexual-offense allegations said to have occurred in Portugal between 2000 and 2017 and was acquitted in October of that year. The presiding judge said evidence presented was insufficient, that some witnesses were unreliable and that some testimony had been affected by media coverage.

A court in Hildesheim said it could not legally disclose whether Brückner will face conditions after his release. His lawyer, Friedrich Fülscher, told regional broadcaster NDR that his client will be required to wear an electronic ankle tag, report regularly to probation services and surrender his passport. German weekly Der Spiegel first reported the conditions.

Brückner also faces an Oct. 27 court date in Oldenburg in northwestern Germany on a charge of insulting a prison employee. A district court there sentenced him to six weeks in prison on that charge, but his defense has appealed.

Authorities in all three countries continue to piece together events from the night of Madeleine McCann’s disappearance. Police statements in Germany emphasized that the release from prison in the unrelated rape case does not halt investigative work connected to the 2007 disappearance.