There has been no trace of Madeleine McCann since she disappeared from her family's holiday apartment in Praia da Luz, Portugal, more than 17 years ago on May 3, 2007. She would now be 21 years old. File photo/UPI
Oct. 8 (UPI) -- A court in northern Germany on Tuesday acquitted a drifter suspected of involvement in the abduction of Madeleine McCann of rape and child sex abuse charges in a result that could impact the separate criminal investigation into the 2007 disappearance of the British child in Portugal.
Christian Bruckner, 47, was cleared of three charges of aggravated rape and two of sexual abuse of children in Portugal between 2000 and 2017 after an eight-month trial by Braunschweig District Court judge Uta Engemanndue who threw out the case due to lack of evidence.
Engemanndue said she had no choice because the testimony of prosecution witnesses was "inconsistent" and "almost worthless" and while the media and public might disagree, judges were bound by the evidence and their impartiality oath and not by other cases or what people wanted them to do.
Bruckner's lawyer argued the case, which alleges that while living in the Portuguese resort of Praia da Luz prior to Madeleine's disappearance his client raped three women, one of whom was a teen, and indecently exposed himself to two girls, should never have been brought.
He said the acquittal was the correct decision because the allegations of the attacks on the teen and one of the women relied solely on the testimony of witnesses, some of whom the court found to be unreliable, as the victims never came forward and were never identified.
Bruckner, whom Braunschweig chief prosecutor Hans Christian Wolters named in 2020 as an official suspect in Madeleine's disappearance from Praia da Luz and believes is responsible for her death, is currently serving a seven-year sentence for the 2004 rape of a 72-year-old American woman in the town where he lived
Bruckner, who has never been charged in connection with the McCann case, is due to be released from prison in September and could be free as soon as the spring, according to his lawyer who said he also now planned to challenge the rape conviction.
Prosecutors said they were working to have Bruckner stay behind bars in preventative custody after his sentence ends but Tuesday's acquittal also now threatens the McCann case because it would potentially call some of the same witnesses in the rape and child sex abuse case.
Wolters told the BBC he planned to appeal the verdict in the Federal Court of Justice, Germany's equivalent of the Supreme Court, and that the acquittal was not legally binding until the court had ruled on the matter.
In May 2023, evidence gathered in a fresh operation at a Portuguese reservoir conducted by German, British and Portuguese investigators searching for Madeleine was handed over to German authorities after a three-day effort involving sniffer dogs, divers and forensics specialists.
The Arade Reservoir, 31 miles from where the McCanns were holidaying when three-year-old Madeleine went missing, became a crime scene because Bruckner was reported to have frequented the beauty spot.
Wolters said at the time that he hoped the search by the Portuguese Judiciary Police at the request of German Federal Police would turn up clothing or other important evidence and potentially a body.
Witnesses have told investigators they saw a VW campervan fitting the description of the one Bruckner owned at the time in Praia da Luz on the day and that a man who looked like Bruckner was with a child near the apartment complex where the family were staying on the evening she vanished.
