Maddie suspect’s link to girl, 10

GERMAN prosecutors have urged police in Portugal to investigate ‘more sexual abuse and rapes’ they believe Madeleine McCann suspect Christian Brueckner may have carried out on the Algarve.

Chief prosecutor Hans Christian Wolters, heading the Madeleine probe in Germany, confirmed the move as he gave fresh details of a child sex offence linking Brueckner to the Algarve a month before Madeleine vanished.

‘We are investigating whether he committed more crimes in Portugal,’ Mr Wolters told Portugal’s state broadcaster RTP. ‘I’m not able to say how many cases are under investigation at the moment. But we think there could be more crime, more sexual abuse, more rapes.’

He confirmed that Brueckner was a suspect in an April 2007 crime, when a man committed a solo sex act in front of a girl on a beach near the Praia da Luz resort from where Madeleine vanished on May 3 that year. Mr Wolters added: ‘We think he could be responsible for a crime of sexual abuse on a 10-year-old German child in Portugal in April 2007. He has not been charged.’