Cops in Maddie search info row
Portuguese keeping Germans in the dark
GERMAN prosecutors were kept in the dark about new searches for Madeleine McCann – raising new fears about the repeatedly bungled inquiry.
Braunschweig public prosecutor Hans Christian Wolters said he was not told that Portuguese police were due to search three abandoned wells near the seaside haunt of paedophile Christian Brueckner.
He said he did not even know what had led to the searches.
The search for Madeleine, three, has been dogged by mistakes since she vanished from her family’s Praia da Luz holiday home in 2007.
Critics say the local police focused on blaming her parents, Kate and Gerry, both 52, rather than finding whoever had taken her.
Last week, local police divers searched three old wells about 10 minutes from Praia da Luz. It is believed they found little.
Wolters, leading the investigation into Brueckner, said: “The measures were not taken in consultation with us. The Portuguese police are investigating themselves. We don’t know what knowledge they are based on.”
The wells are in an area which was popular with rapist Brueckner, 43, at the time Madeleine disappeared.
He is now serving 21 months in Germany for drug offences.
Brueckner was jailed for seven years in 2005 for raping a 72-year-old American woman in her home in Praia da Luz.
Last month, the German police said they had evidence that Madeleine had been murdered, and would not “drag it out” before deciding whether Brueckner should be charged.