German Man Suspected in Madeleine McCann Disappearance Is Released From Prison

Eighteen years after Madeleine McCann, a 3-year-old British girl, disappeared in Portugal, the man considered a suspect by Britain and Germany was released after serving a sentence in a separate case.

The German man under investigation for the disappearance of a 3-year-old British girl in Portugal in 2007, one of Europe’s most widely known unsolved crimes, was released from prison on Wednesday after serving a sentence in a separate case.

A German public prosecutor announced in 2020 that the man, Christian Brückner, was formally being investigated in the kidnapping and murder of the girl, Madeleine McCann. Mr. Brückner, who has denied involvement, has not been charged in the case.

The London Metropolitan Police has said that he remains the “primary suspect” in the German federal investigation, as well as a suspect in its own investigation.

Mr. Brückner is expected to leave a prison in central Germany after serving six years for a separate crime, the rape of a 72-year-old American woman in Portugal. He has refused to be interviewed by the British police ahead of his release.

Here’s what to know about the cases involving Mr. Brückner and the McCann investigation:

What happened in the McCann case?

Madeleine McCann disappeared in May 2007 from a holiday resort in Praia da Luz, on Portugal’s southern coast, where she was staying with her family.

Her parents, Kate and Gerry McCann, physicians from Leicester, England, had left Madeleine and her two younger siblings in an holiday apartment for several hours while the parents ate dinner with friends. Ms. McCann told the police that she checked in on the sleeping children at around 9 p.m., but that when she returned an hour later, Madeleine was gone.

The Portuguese police, who searched the area, were soon joined by British officers. The news media intensely covered Madeleine’s case, and pictures of her were soon familiar to much of Britain and the rest of Europe.

The initial investigation by the Portuguese police drew widespread criticism after Mr. and Ms. McCann were named as suspects. They were formally cleared in 2008.

Over the years, the international search effort has inspired books, front pages and a Netflix documentary series.

Despite that publicity, Madeleine remains missing.

When did German police start to suspect Brückner?

Mr. Brückner, a German with a long criminal record that includes convictions for sexual assault and sexual abuse of children, lived in Portugal from 1995 to 2007.

The German authorities began to investigate a potential link in 2013, after Madeleine’s parents spoke about the case on German television, according to Christian Hoppe, the head of Germany’s federal criminal police. After Mr. Hoppe in 2020 announced the investigation on public television, the public prosecutor in Braunschweig, Germany, announced that the office was beginning a murder investigation into a 43-year-old German in the case, without using Mr. Brückner’s full name.

The announcement was the first time the German authorities spoke of murder rather than abduction; in Britain, investigators still refer to Madeleine as missing.

At the time the prosecutor announced an investigation, Mr. Brückner was serving a seven-year sentence for the 2005 rape of the 72-year-old woman, an attack that occurred not far from the resort where Madeleine was abducted.

What’s the latest in the investigation?

While German investigators say they have received more than 1,000 tips and are still trying to build a case against Mr. Brückner, the McCann investigation appears to have grown cold.

This summer, German investigators and the Portuguese police searched the area near where Madeleine went missing, including a small cabin where Mr. Brückner lived. But investigators are believed to have found no useful evidence.

In an exceedingly rare move, the Braunschweig public prosecutor officially noted that Mr. Brückner was a suspect in the McCann case in 2022, when they brought five new charges of rape and sexual abuse against him in a separate case, crimes that all occurred from 2000 to 2017 in Portugal.

Why is Brückner being released now?

In that latest case involving the five charges, in which Mr. Brückner was accused of rape and child abuse in Braunschweig, the state’s prosecutor argued that he presented a danger to society and urged the court to impose a 15-year sentence and security custody on him. That sentence would have kept him in jail past his release date.

But after a 38-day trial, a judge acquitted Mr. Brückner in October, citing a lack of evidence. The state prosecutor is appealing that verdict.

On Wednesday, Mr. Brückner will have served his 2019 sentence and will be free to leave prison. Fearing he may leave the country, the public prosecutor has petitioned a judge to force him to wear an ankle bracelet and to be monitored by the authorities.

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