Police in hunt for the young girlfriend Brueckner ‘left black and blue’
‘She needs to speak to police’
THE former girlfriend of Maddie suspect Christian Brueckner was being sought by police, sources said last night.
Nakscije Miftari, 25, is wanted for questioning by German police as a witness because they need more information on Brueckner.
The pair began an 18-month relationship in 2012, when she was just 17 and he was aged 37.
She has not been seen at her home in Braunschweig, where Brueckner previously lived, since Friday.
A family member said she had fled from the flat she shares with her mother after news emerged of Brueckner’s links to Madeleine but he urged her to return to speak to police.
He told the Daily Mail: ‘She needs to speak to police, she might know something – men tell their girlfriends things, they speak out when drunk – she could have information.’
Friends said she had told them she planned to flee to Macedonia. It is understood she has a Macedonian passport but also has family and links to Kosovo and Albania. When they were together, Brueckner beat his teenage girlfriend ‘black and blue’ after she confronted him about child pornography she found on his laptop, a friend said yesterday. Lenta Johlitz – who worked in a corner shop managed by Brueckner – said the girlfriend ended up in hospital after the attack in 2013.
Miss Johlitz said: ‘She was 17 years old. She was very small, very slim like a child.’
She said she asked the girlfriend about the age difference and she replied: ‘It’s fine, I love him, he gives me what I don’t get from other men.’
He apparently attacked her after she found pictures of children on his laptop.
His former colleague said: ‘She wanted to talk about it but he beat her and she ended up in hospital. He strangled her, she was black and blue all over. After that she ended the relationship.’
The girlfriend was ‘afraid’ and did not report the images to police.
Miss Johlitz was interviewed by police yesterday after she told how Brueckner ‘lost it’ when Madeleine was on the news and how he made comments about feeding humans to pigs.
Recalling the conversation in 2013, she said: ‘We were in his flat and the case was in the news and I said “What kind of person would do something like that”. He said “Can you stop talking about this, this girl is dead. She is dead and you will never find them”.’ She said Brueckner added: ‘You can make a body disappear quickly. Pigs eat human flesh.’
It comes as it emerged police in Braunschweig were concerned about Brueckner after he left prison in August 2018 so they put him under 24-hour surveillance.
He had been jailed for 15 months for sexual abuse of a child and was due to serve another sentence for drug trafficking. But due to a legal blunder, he was released before it was imposed so instead he was watched ‘round the clock’.
But police lost him when he travelled to Amsterdam until September
2018, when he was arrested in Italy after applying for a passport.
Brueckner is currently in jail in Germany on drugs charges. He has appealed a seven-year sentence imposed for raping a 72year-old in Portugal in 2005.
If convicted of killing Madeleine,
Brueckner could serve just 15 years under German law. If he were to be charged and tried in the UK, a guilty verdict would mean a life sentence. But German law bans the extradition of suspects to Britain after Brexit.