(Berlin) A 45-year-old German, suspected of the murder of the young Briton Madeleine McCann, has been charged in Germany with five other crimes and sexual offenses committed between 2000 and 2017 in Portugal, the Brunswick prosecutor’s office announced on Tuesday.
Posted at 10:38 a.m.
The suspect, in custody in Germany, is charged with three alleged rapes and two sexual abuse of children, the prosecution said in a statement.
This man detained in Kiel (Germany) was identified by German investigators in 2020 as the main suspect in the murder of the British girl.
But the investigations are continuing and the German public prosecutor’s office has not yet proceeded with indictment for the murder of Madeleine McCann, known as Maddie, who disappeared on May 3, 2007 shortly before her fourth birthday in Praia da Luz, a seaside resort in the south of Portugal, where she was vacationing with her parents and friends.
He is now charged in Germany for five other sex crimes and offenses committed in Portugal between 2000 and 2017.
These include the rape of a woman aged between 70 and 80, committed between 2000 and 2006 and which he had filmed. The victim, assaulted in his second home, had been raped and whipped.
He is also prosecuted for having tied, between 2000 and 2006, a young German girl of 14 years naked to a post, before whipping her and imposing an oral report on her. There too the scene was filmed
The third indictment concerns the rape on June 16, 2004 in Praia da Rocha of a 20-year-old Irish woman in whose home he had managed to enter through the balcony.
The last two charges concern sexual assaults against a 10-year-old German girl on a beach in the district of Faro on April 7, 2007, and on June 11, 2017 in Bartolomeu de Messines, against an 11-year-old Portuguese girl.
“My colleagues are rather working on these other cases in order to be able to close this project in the near future. When it’s over, we will deal exclusively with Maddie, “said Hans Christian Wolters, spokesperson for the Brunswick prosecutor’s office, to AFP, about the ongoing investigations.
The accused is a multi-recidivist sex offender who was convicted, among other things, of sexual abuse of children, recalls the prosecution, specifying that he is currently serving a seven-year prison sentence for a rape also committed in Portugal in 2005.