Christian Brückner, the main suspect in the disappearance of Madeleine McCann, a UK toddler, has made a court appearance in Germany to face sexual assault and rape charges in unrelated cases.
The 47-year-old appeared in court in Braunschweig, northern Germany, amid a flurry of media and public interest. The opening of the trial, where tight security was in place, was delayed by the sheer number of people trying to gain access to the courtroom.
The trial was then adjourned after just nine minutes, owing to objections to one of the lay judges made by Brückner’s defence lawyer, Friedrich Fülscher, who accused her of being biased and unsuitable to act as a judge in the cases.
The judge overseeing Brückner’s case, Ute Lindemann, accepted the objection. She said the trial would resume next Friday with a new lay judge.
Brückner’s trial will focus on sexual offences he allegedly committed between 2000 and 2017 in Portugal. The charges are not related to the McCann case, in which he is a suspect but has not been charged.
Brückner, a convicted rapist, has been named by international media but is referred to in Germany according to privacy guidelines as Christian B. He is accused of three counts of rape and two of sexual abuse of children.
Brückner was visible through the barred windows of the armoured police vehicle that brought him to court and which was met by a throng of photographers, the first time he had been seen in public since he was first linked to the McCann case in 2020.
The German spent years living in Portugal, including in the resort of Praia da Luz, at about the time that McCann, three, disappeared from the flat where her family was on holiday in 2007. He has denied any involvement in her disappearance.
Brückner is serving a seven-year prison sentence for a rape he committed in Portugal in 2005.
Before the trial, Brückner dismissed the charges against him as “absurd”, telling a British tabloid: “I hope [they] will find some answers to their questions soon.”
Fülscher said he and his four-strong defence team would seek Brückner’s acquittal “on all counts”.
Charges filed by prosecutors four months ago pertain to an attack on an elderly woman in her holiday flat in Portugal between 2000 and 2006. Brückner is alleged to have tied her up and raped her, before beating her with a whip and recording the incident on video.
He is also alleged in the same period to have tied a German-speaking female, aged 14 or above, to a wooden post in his own apartment in Praia da Luz. He is claimed to have beaten her with a whip and forced her to perform oral sex.
He is also accused of breaking into the apartment of an Irish woman, Hazel Behan, then aged 20, in nearby Praia da Rocha in June 2004, before raping her, tying her to a…
2024-02-16 09:33:25
Source from www.theguardian.com
