Two things of interest in this article
1) The Germans categorically don’t think the McCanns had anything to do with the disappearance
2) Brückner’s lawyer resigned from the case and has been replaced by a “top” lawyer. Has the Fund for this man’s defence team already reached a million thanks to Spam and his pals’ efforts?
Madeleine McCann murder case: counselling for suspect Christian Brückner
Madeleine McCann was abducted in May 2007
Madeleine McCann was abducted in May 2007
KATE MCCANN/PA
The convicted paedophile suspected of murdering Madeleine McCann is receiving counselling in prison while he is held in isolation to prevent other inmates attacking him.
Christian Brückner, who is serving a 21-month sentence for drug trafficking in Kiel, northern Germany, is being investigated over Madeleine’s abduction in May 2007.
Claus Christian Claussen, the justice minister of the northern state of Schleswig-Holstein, told a parliamentary hearing yesterday that Brückner, 43, has been placed in isolation so he can be “monitored more closely”. He was being protected, Mr Claussen added, to prevent “assaults by fellow prisoners” and was being given counselling during a “special psychological situation”.
While investigators continued to search for new leads yesterday, a senior German prosecutor suggested that officials in Portugal still believed Madeleine’s parents, Kate and Gerry McCann, from Rothley, Leicestershire, were responsible for her disappearance.
Hans Christian Wolters, the German prosecutor leading the investigation, said: “I think the Portuguese officials still think that Maddie’s parents are responsible for her disappearance.
“From our perspective, the suspect is in jail in Germany right now. And this is not the case for Maddie’s parents. We think that the parents don’t have anything to do with it. We are convinced that our 43-year-old suspect is the murderer of Maddie McCann.”
He appeared to criticise the Portuguese authorities by describing working relations as “more cumbersome” than those with Scotland Yard and said not all evidence is shared between the countries. “Working together with the authorities in south European countries is generally more time-consuming,” he added. “They take a long time for everything.”
Scotland Yard and German prosecutors made televised appeals last week for information about two homes, a camper van and a Jaguar car used by Brückner while he was living close to the McCann’s holiday apartment.
Brückner’s lawyer, Jan-Christian Hochmann, has resigned from the case but has not said why. Brückner has appointed one of Germany’s top lawyers, Johann Schwenn. Friedrich Fülscher, another lawyer representing Brückner, told RTL television that the suspect is “currently not providing any information” about the allegations he was involved in Madeleine’s murder.
When asked how Brückner was coping, he replied: “How should a person who is isolated in a correctional facility and who is accused by half the world’s population of the worst crimes?”
A friend of Brückner while he was in Praia da Luz told a court last year that the suspect had entered properties through open windows while living close to the McCann family’s holiday apartment, it emerged yesterday.
The patio windows of the apartment where Madeleine, three, was sleeping had been left open while her parents dined near by. Police say Brückner’s mobile telephone was used close to the scene less than an hour earlier.
The friend gave evidence at the trial in December which led to Brückner being convicted of raping a 72-year-old American woman after breaking into her villa in Praia da Luz in 2005.
The unnamed friend, a 52-year-old German, said he had noticed three stacks of passports in Brückner’s rented farmhouse. He told the judge that Brückner had explained to him that he had stolen the passports during “night walks”. The friend said: “He probably got into one or the other apartments through open windows.”
When Brückner was arrested he asked the friend to take items from his farmhouse and “noticed some self-burned CDs with labels about certain sexual practices”. Two other witnesses described in detail having found two video recordings in the house that showed Brückner in rape scenes.
