British detectives want to bring Christian Brueckner to the UK to stand trial for the abducting and murder of Madeleine McCann. Photo / AFP
Police detectives in the UK are trying to bring German citizen Christian Brueckner to Britain to stand trial for the abduction and murder of Madeleine McCann, according to the Daily Telegraph.
One of Scotland Yard’s most senior officers is leading a push to charge the 48-year-old before the 20th anniversary of Madeleine’s disappearance next year.
The force wants Brueckner in the dock at the Old Bailey and believes it can gather a strong enough case for the Crown Prosecution Service to authorise charges.
But the German constitution prevents the extradition of its citizens to non-EU countries, which could lead Berlin to reject the request. This would be likely to provoke a diplomatic and legal row.
If Germany still refuses to hand over Brueckner, the Met is committed to ensuring that he still faces charges in Germany or in Portugal, where 3-year-old Madeleine went missing in 2007.
Brueckner was living a mile away from the Praia da Luz hotel where Madeleine disappeared. While serving a seven-year prison sentence in Hanover for the rape of a pensioner, he was named as the prime suspect in her disappearance, but charges were not brought before he was released last year.
While the Met investigation is a missing-person case, a small team of specialist detectives has been building a file of evidence for the CPS on suspected abduction and murder.
A police source said the team was determined to explore every avenue available to achieve justice.
Britain and Germany enjoy a reciprocal extradition agreement, governed by the EU-UK Trade and Cooperation Agreement (TCA), which came into force in 2021.
But Article 16 of the German constitution overrides this agreement, stating that no citizen may be extradited to a foreign country outside the EU. Before Brexit, Brueckner could have been extradited without such complications.
Sir Mark Rowley, the Met Police Commissioner, confirmed last year that his force was looking into whether it would be possible to extradite Brueckner to the UK.
At the time, he said: “One of the reasons we are involved is that murder is in many situations extraterritorial and potentially a murder of a British subject can in certain circumstances be charged in the UK.
“There’s lots of maybes, so at the moment we are taking stock with the Germans and Portuguese.”
Senior officials have been exploring whether there might be another mechanism available to see Brueckner stand trial in the UK, but detectives are continuing to build their criminal case in the meantime.
One possibility is that British and German police could hand over their evidence to Portuguese authorities, which, as an EU state, could extradite Brueckner there.
At the weekend, Kate and Gerry McCann marked the 19th anniversary of their daughter’s disappearance with a statement, speaking of their need to find “some justice”.
In a post to the official Find Madeleine Campaign Facebook page, they wrote: “19 years. The search goes on ... to find our Madeleine, to achieve some justice, to make the world that bit safer.”
Hans Christian Wolters, who led the German investigation into Brueckner, has claimed repeatedly that there is concrete evidence against the sex offender, despite failing to charge him in connection with the case.
In 2021, he said he was “100% sure” Brueckner had murdered Madeleine, adding: “We’re confident we have the man who took and killed her. It is now possible that we could charge. We have that evidence now.
“But it’s not just about charging him – we want to charge him with the best body of evidence possible.”
Madeleine disappeared from her parents’ holiday apartment in Praia da Luz on May 3, 2007. Despite one of the biggest manhunts ever mounted, she has never been found. A bungled police investigation meant much of the evidence from the crime scene was not secured.
Brueckner was jointly identified as a prime suspect in the case in 2020. He stayed in and around Praia da Luz between 1995 and 2007. He was suspected of burgling hotel rooms and breaking into apartments and villas.
Mobile data revealed that Brueckner’s phone was in Praia da Luz an hour before Madeleine was abducted. Police also obtained statements from his associates that claimed he had made partial confessions to the crime, including one in which he told a friend in 2008 that “she did not scream”.
Searches of a property linked to Brueckner in 2016 unearthed a cache of disturbing paedophilic material, as well as diaries describing fantasies about abducting children.
Brueckner has always denied any involvement in Madeleine’s disappearance and has been moving around Germany since his release from prison.
- The Telegraph
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