Brückner’s lawyer says allotment dig is ‘desperate act’ by police
Excavations of sealed cellar on land where the suspected abductor lived prompt solicitor’s response
‘My client is silent on the charges, but that doesn’t mean that he has anything to hide’
CHRISTIAN BRÜCKNER’S lawyer has called the Hannover allotment dig a “pure desperate act” in his first statement on the case since the dig began.
The lawyer representing Brückner, who is the lead suspect in the disappearance of Madeleine Mccann, has issued a statement in response to the two-day dig conducted earlier this week by Braunschweig police at an allotment plot just outside Hannover.
Federal officers in Germany uncovered a sealed cellar on Wednesday, where locals said that Brückner had stayed in 2007, the same year three-year-old Madeleine went missing from Praia da Luz, Portugal.
But the 43-year-old’s lawyer,
Friedrich Sebastian Fülscher, released a statement yesterday calling the search a “pure desperate act of the public prosecutor’s office”.
Brückner is currently serving a sentence at Kiel for drugs charges. However, it was revealed on Friday that his lawyer has put in a new bid for his release, meaning he could walk free on Jan 7, 2021.
“Apparently, it’s hard for investigators to admit they backed the wrong horse,” Mr Fülscher said.
Brückner’s lawyer added: “My client is silent on the charges but that doesn’t mean he has anything to hide.”
Discussing the rape of a 72-year-old American woman, for which his client was jailed last year for seven years – and continues to plead his innocence – Mr Fülscher said that it is “totally unusual” for someone to be a both a paedophile and a gerontophile, meaning that they are sexually attracted to the elderly.
His remarks come as a film emerged yesterday of Brückner driving a distinctive VW campervan through Spain just weeks before the British girl’s disappearance.
The video, which was shot in 2007 when Brückner lived near Praia da Luz, shows him driving a VW campervan. The vehicle matches the description of the one that German police believe was used in Madeleine’s abduction.
In the video, Brückner can be seen laughing and joking with three male tourists as he drives them along Spain’s southern coast.
One of the passengers, named only as Tomas, told Mailonline, “It makes me sick to think that the little girl could have been taken away in the same van a month later.
“It is scary to know now that he was a rapist of an elderly woman,” the German national added.