Madeleine McCann update as court shares new information on German suspect

A man being investigated by authorities in the Madeleine McCann disappearance case allegedly abducted another child just days before the British youngster was abducted.

Prosecutors have accused Christian Brueckner – the prime suspect in the McCann case – of committing a series of separate attacks that took place between 2000 and 2017.

Documents presented to a German court allege that, in one incident on April 7, 2007, less than a month before Madeleine went missing on May 3 that year, he “lay in wait for a child on the beach”.

The charges also allege that, after snatching the child, the 47-year-old forced them to “perform sexual acts on him”.

Police have spent the last five years investigating the German national, who denies any involvement in McCann’s 2003 disappearance, in connection with the decades-old unsolved case.

Brueckner is yet to be charged in connection to the youngster’s disappearance.

The latest documents reveal he will be tried for five separate attacks alleged to have taken place over a 17-year period.

Another one of the alleged incidents is said to have taken place less than a mile from where McCann went missing in the Portugese resort of Praia da Luz.

The charges relate to the attack and abduction of a 14-year-old girl alleged to have taken place between December 28, 2000 and April 6, 2006.

Brueckner is said to have beaten the girl with a whip before forcing her to perform oral sex acts on him, which he allegedly recorded.

He is currently serving a seven-year sentence at a German prison for rape and drug trafficking.

In the most recent of the listed incidents, he is alleged to have made “eye contact” with a young boy in a playground at a folk festival in 2017 before exposing his genitals and “pleasuring himself”.

Brueckner, who had formerly lived in Portugal, was extradited to Germany in 2018 and later found guilty of the rape of a 72-year-old woman in Praia da Luz.

Officials have not delivered any significant updates to their investigation of Madeleine’s disappearance for some time, with the most recent statement coming from her parents, Gerry and Kate McCann.

On New Year’s Day 2024, the couple said in a post on the Official Find Madeleine Campaign that there was “no significant news” but hoped their “perseverance will eventually yield results”.