Maddie suspect ‘not likely to face charges’
CHARGES against Madeleine McCann suspect Christian Brueckner are unlikely, his lawyer claimed yesterday.
Friedrich Fulscher said he has not been told what evidence German prosecutors have against his client but it was not up to him to ‘prove his innocence’.
Brueckner, 43, has denied any involvement in the three-yearold’s disappearance.
Mr Fulscher said it was for detectives to prove he was guilty.
‘As things stand now I do not actually believe there will be any charges,’ he said. ‘I do not anticipate a prosecution.
‘Thank God, in our legal system the prosecution has to prove the crime to an accused person and it is not the accused who must exonerate himself.
‘As long as my client does not know what he is accused of, and on what basis, there is no reason to think otherwise.’
Mr Fulscher said he had not had access to prosecutors’ files but added: ‘The question should be, what speaks for my client’s guilt?
And that’s the job of the public prosecutor’s office in Braunschweig, to put the facts on the table that speak for my client’s guilt.
‘After completing its investigation, the public prosecutor’s office must assess whether there are sufficient suspicions to warrant an indictment and if a conviction is more likely than an acquittal.’
It comes after the lawyer went to the European Court of Justice in Luxembourg on Thursday to demand Brueckner be freed from jail on a legal technicality. Mr Fulscher
argued that the convicted paedophile’s arrest for the brutal rape of a 72-year-old American was unlawful.
Brueckner was found guilty last year of the horrific attack on the woman in Portugal in 2005 after his DNA matched a hair found on her bed. The former car mechanic is currently serving time in jail in the northern German city of Kiel for drugs offences.
He faces a further seven years in prison for raping the pensioner but Mr Fulscher said he should not serve that sentence as he was extradited from Portugal in 2017 on separate child abuse charges.
He claimed Germany needed Portugal’s explicit consent to extradite him for one crime then try him for another. A judgment on the case could take six months.
German prosecutors believe Brueckner killed Madeleine, who vanished from an apartment in Praia da Luz, Portugal, in 2007 while on holiday with her parents, Kate and Glasgow-born Gerry, and twin brother and sister Sean and Amelie, but do not yet have enough evidence to charge him.
They have issued appeals for witnesses and for information about a mystery person who called Brueckner on his mobile phone the night Madeleine, from Rothley, Leicestershire, went missing.
German prosecutor Christian Wolters said the case was ongoing.
‘We will not draw a line under the case even if we cannot promise that at some point there will be an indictment in the Maddie case,’ Mr Wolters said.
‘I don’t think our accused will be released any time soon because he’ll probably be in jail for drug trafficking until 2021.
‘But we cannot influence the decision of the European Court of Justice anyway and we have to accept it as it will be.’