Suspect linked to Madeleine McCann case

GERMAN prosecutors have opened an investigation into whether a 43-yearold who has emerged as a possible suspect in the disappearance of British girl Madeleine (Maddie) McCann in Portugal may have been involved in a similar crime in Germany.

Prosecutors in the northern town of Stendal, 100km west of Berlin, told the dpa news agency yesterday they had opened a preliminary investigation to determine whether there was anything to link the suspect to the 2015 disappearance of a 5-year-old girl from a nearby forest.

The authorities have not released the suspect’s name, but he has been widely identified by the German media as Christian B.

He reportedly had a property 100km southwest of Stendal in the town of Neuwegersleben when the 5-year-old girl disappeared.

Maddie was 3 years old at the time she disappeared in 2007 from an apartment while her family was on holiday in the seaside town of Praia da Luz in Portugal’s Algarve region.

German authorities this week said they had identified a German citizen as a suspect in Maddie’s case and were investigating him on suspicion of murder. The suspect, who is in prison in Germany, spent many years in Portugal, including in Praia da Luz around the time of Maddie’s disappearance, and has two previous convictions for “sexual contact with girls”, the authorities said.

The suspect’s description fits that of a 43-year-old man who was convicted in December in the city of Braunschweig of the 2005 rape of a 72-year-old American woman in her apartment in Portugal, based largely on DNA evidence.

The suspect has appealed his conviction.

According to a copy of the rape verdict – which has all names redacted – sent by the Braunschweig court in response to a question by The Associated Press about the suspect’s December conviction, the German man was a career criminal who was in and out of jail. |

Madeleine McCann