Brückner, 47, is believed by German investigators to have killed 3-year-old Madeleine after abducting her from her parent’s holiday apartment in Portugal in 2007.
Brückner, 47, is believed by German investigators to have killed 3-year-old Madeleine after abducting her from her parent’s holiday apartment in Portugal in 2007.
Brückner was acquitted of rape charges after the presiding judge deemed evidence against him as “insufficient” for conviction.
Brückner is already serving seven years for raping American pensioner Diana Menkes in Portugal in 2005.
Convicted paedophile and rapist Christian Brückner, the prime suspect in the Madeleine McCann case, could be released from prison next year after he was acquitted of separate rape charges by a controversial German judge.
Brückner, 47, is believed by German investigators to have killed 3-year-old McCann after abductingher from her parents’ holiday apartment in Portugal in 2007.
Instead, he was on trial at Brunswick regional court for various non-related offences that took place in Portugal between December 2000 and June 2017. These include charges of rape and masturbating in front of children.
This week, Uta Inse Engemann, the presiding judge, said evidence against Brückner was “insufficient” and acquitted him of all charges.
Engemann said she takes her responsibility to “serve the truth” seriously, but added: “We cannot wrap people in cotton wool.”
“This oath means that we don’t have to cater to the views of the media and the defence and the prosecution or the table of regulars-in-a-pub,” she said after delivering her verdict.
“We have to balance all the evidence presented to us.”
Christian Brückner, the man suspected by German authorities of murdering missing British girl Madeleine McCann, arrives at court in June this year for a session in his trial of an unrelated case. Photo / AFP
Starting her two-and-a-half-hour verdict, Engemann said the testimonies of two former petty criminals were “almost worthless” in relation to the alleged rapes of an elderly woman and a 14-year-old girl.
Manfred Seyfurth and Helge Büsching claimed to have seen videos of Brückner committing rape after breaking into his house in Portugal while he was in prison for stealing diesel.
But Engemann said their testimonies contained inconsistencies on the age of the victims, their nationalities, the language they spoke, the position they were raped in and whether Brückner was involved.
Moving on to the rape of Hazel Behan, Engemann said she believed something “dreadful” had happened to the Irish national, but argued it was not plausible to identify Brückner as her rapist simply by saying he had “piercing blue eyes”.
The judge went as far as to question whether Brückner even had such eyes, having requested to look into them directly herself.
The judge then argued it was not plausible to conclude that Brückner could be found guilty of raping Behan because he had been convicted of Diana Menkes’ rape in 2005.
A police mug shot of Christian Brueckner. The image was taken in 2018 in Milan where Brueckner was arrested and extradited to Germany for the rape he is currently imprisoned for. Photo / Carabinieri Milano via Getty Images
The prosecution had argued there was a clear link between the rapes because Brückner allegedly liked to tie people up, inflict pain on them for his own excitement, humiliate and subjugate them, and that the rape was only secondary to him – which it argued happened in both cases.
But the judge pointed out the difference in locations in the cases of Menkes and Behan, the level of security at each location, the age of the victims, and the way in which they were raped.
The trial was a fiercely contested battleground. The courtroom saw angry verbal skirmishes over 35 days of proceedings between prosecutors and the defence, led by Friedrich Fülscher, along with shouted interruptions by Engemann.
Last week, Ute Lindemann, the chief public prosecutor, demanded a total of 15 years in prison for Brückner, and for him to be placed under preventive detention, whereby prisoners deemed to pose a danger to society are not released even if they have served their sentence.
Fülscher, Brückner’s defence attorney, tried to dismantle the prosecution’s case in his terse closing plea on Monday and showed solidarity with the judge, whom the prosecution accused of bias in favour of Brückner.
He said: “Last week, you attacked the professional judge, my colleagues and myself, polemically and personally for long bouts.
“You made it clear from the outset that your closing statement was addressed to the public and not to the chamber.
“You were particularly concerned with maximising damage to professional judges. Almost without exception, your criticism was unjustified and of a rarely low level. My colleagues and I will not stoop to this level today, rather devote ourselves to the actual purpose of these proceedings.”
Engemann, who was born in the federal state of Lower Saxony during the 1960s, studied law at the University of Göttingen before starting her first judicial role at Brunswick regional court in 1993.
Her career took a controversial turn between 2005 and 2010 because of her association with Vaternotruf, a fathers’ rights organisation based in Berlin.
Vaternotruf was known for its outspoken advocacy of fathers involved in custodial disputes, often criticising what it perceived as systemic biases against men within family courts.
Engemann drew fierce criticism from feminist organisations and legal professionals, who raised profound concerns about potential conflicts of interest.
She then officially distanced herself from the Vaternotruf organisation, but the issue has continued to raise questions about her neutrality.
By 2015, her career focus shifted to criminal cases, and she presided over a violent crime trial in Brunswick in 2017.
Brückner’s case went to trial early this year, with Engemann triggering controversy by ruling in July that the evidence against him was so “insufficient” that the arrest warrant would be lifted.
It provoked particular concern that she made this announcement before the prosecution had finished giving its evidence.
As a result, the prosecution moved to have Engemann removed on the basis that she allegedly was biased.
A prosecution motion for prejudice was filed at the 28th hearing and claimed that by making the previous announcement, she had hinted at a preconceived intent to acquit Brückner.
The prosecution now has the ability to appeal Engemann’s verdict by taking it to Germany’s supreme court, the Federal Constitutional Court in Karlsruhe.
If this court rules in their favour, there will be a retrial using a different judge. Lindemann already stated her intention to “take it to Karlsruhe”.
Meanwhile, Brückner still needs to serve the end of the sentence he was handed in 2019 for the brutal rape of Diana Menkes, a US national, in Portugal in 2005. He is set to be freed next year.
In court on Monday, Fülscher said: “We are sitting here today to decide on the freedom and the fate of a human being. Mr Brückner is accused of committing five serious offences, but the court of the main trial tells a completely different story than the public prosecution office has presented here.”
Alluding to Nazi Germany, he continued: “Our constitutional state is first and foremost that the respective offence and not the offender is at the centre of the proceedings.
“We no longer lock people up here because they have character deficits. That time is long gone in our history, thank God.”
A report provided by Christian Riedeman, the forensic psychiatrist, painted a grim picture of Brückner.
Riedemann testified that Brückner falls into the “highest category of danger”, describing him as a serious threat to society.
She also revealed that he wrote disturbing stories with graphic descriptions and drawings detailing the rape of women and children.
This revelation further fuelled the prosecution’s narrative of Brückner as a dangerous and calculating individual.
Yet despite the damning psychological profile, the defence argued that his modus operandi was different because of how he interacted with the victims and the language used during the attacks.
The defence maintained doubt on whether he is the perpetrator in all the cases being brought before the court.
But throughout the trial, Brückner sat impassively – appearing gaunt and detached – and did not make any official statement before the court.
