Almost fifteen years after the disappearance of Madeleine McCann in the south of Portugal, the justice system of this country has followed in the footsteps of German investigators who in 2020 identified a repeat pedophile as the main suspect in the murder of the British girl.
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The Portuguese public prosecutor announced Thursday evening the indictment at his request of a suspect in Germany, without specifying his identity or the nature of the suspicions which weigh on him, within the framework of an investigation relating to the disappearance of Maddie and carried out “in cooperation with the English and German authorities”.
The reactions collected Friday by AFP from the Brunswick prosecutor’s office and the lawyer of a German suspect identified as “Christian B.” however, left no doubt that he also became the N.1 suspect of the Portuguese prosecution.
“It is obvious that in Portugal too we have suspicions about him”, but “I would be surprised if they were overnight more advanced in their investigation than we are here”, declared Hans Christian Wolters, the porter. word of the Brunswick prosecutor’s office, responsible for the German aspect of this resounding affair, in an interview with AFP.
“We must not overestimate this measure taken by the Portuguese authorities,” reacted the representative of “Christian B.”, Friedrich Sebastian Fülscher, lawyer in Kiel, in northern Germany.
Prescription risk
“In Portugal, even a murder is prescribed after 15 years. In Maddie’s case, if she died in May 2007, it will be in a few weeks. I guess the prescription was interrupted by this measure,” he added.
“What happened is related to the prescription. (…) Basically, it is a procedural trick on the part of the public prosecutor “to keep the file open, adds Gonçalo Amaral, a former Portuguese inspector in charge of the case, dismissed from the police after accusing the girl’s parents of having killed her by accident, then of having concealed her body.
Madeleine McCann, immediately referred to by the British press as “Maddie”, disappeared on May 3, 2007, shortly before her fourth birthday, in Praia da Luz, a seaside resort in the Algarve region, where she was. on vacation with his family.
Her disappearance had given rise to an exceptional international campaign led by her parents to try to find her. Photos of little Maddie, with her bobbed light brown hair and large, clear eyes, went viral around the world.
Child rape and assault
After 14 months of controversial investigations marked in particular by the indictment, then the exoneration, of the parents, Gerry and Kate McCann, the Portuguese justice had closed the case in 2008, before reopening the file five years later. due to the appearance of “new elements”.
However, the case did not see any real progress until June 2020, when the Brunswick public prosecutor’s office said it was certain that the girl was dead, adding that its suspicions fell on a man, then in detention in Kiel. for another matter.
‘Christian B.’, who is currently serving a prison sentence for the 2005 rape of a 72-year-old American woman in southern Portugal, was living at the time of Maddie’s disappearance a few miles from the hotel in Praia da Luz where she disappeared, established the German investigators.
The Brunswick prosecutor’s office has also started proceedings against him in another rape case, that of an Irish woman, and for child molestation in Portugal.
“My colleagues are rather working on these other cases in order to be able to close this site in the near future. When it’s over, we will deal exclusively with Maddie,” said Hans Christian Wolters, spokesman for the Brunswick prosecutor’s office.