The 45-year-old Christian B. is not only suspected by the German authorities of being responsible for the disappearance of three-year-old Madeleine "Maddie" McCann in 2007.

The sex offender, who is currently serving a long prison sentence in the Oldenburg JVA, is also being investigated for five other serious sexual offences.

There are new developments in these cases: The spokesman for the public prosecutor's office in Braunschweig told the FAZ on Thursday that the investigations had been completed and that Christian B.'s lawyer would be granted access to the files for the first time "these days".

Reinhard Bingener

Political correspondent for Lower Saxony, Saxony-Anhalt and Bremen based in Hanover.

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The public prosecutor's office does not want to officially inform about their further action until the end of May at the earliest.

But investigators' current moves point to an indictment, not a dismissal.

The question is how many allegations will be brought to justice.

In two cases, the investigators apparently have a well-founded starting position: First, there is the allegation that Christian B. masturbated in front of four children in Portugal in 2017 with his pants down, which also led to his arrest at the time.

In addition, the investigators can rely on an incriminating testimony in court in the case of a then 20-year-old Irish woman who claims to have been raped by Christian B. in Portugal in 2004.

The woman states that the German entered her apartment at night with a machete and made video recordings of her ordeal that lasted several hours.

Just a few kilometers from Maddie's resort

This pattern of crime had already existed in part when a 72-year-old American woman was raped on the Algarve coast in 2005, for which Christian B. was sentenced to seven years in prison by the Braunschweig Regional Court at the end of 2019.

At the trial, video witnesses reported two other rapes that showed strong parallels to the case of the young Irish woman.

In these cases, however, the evidence could be worse.

In the fifth case, investigators are investigating whether Christian B. masturbated in front of a ten-year-old girl in 2007.

The case happened a few weeks before "Maddie" went missing and just a few miles from her resort.

If the investigators plan to indict Christian B. in the near future, it will probably take some time before the first trial, because the authorities will have to take European extradition law into account again.

The complex legal issues surrounding the "principle of specialty" in the case of Christian B.'s extradition, first by Portugal and later by Italy, even concerned the European Court of Justice.

In the case of Maddie, who disappeared in 2007, there is currently no prospect of indictment.

The spokesman for the public prosecutor said that "new evidence" against Christian B. had been found in the past two years.

However, the investigators did not succeed in breaking through.

The public prosecutor's office also denied media reports that textile fibers were found in Christian B.'s mobile home at the time, which are said to have come from Maddie's pajamas.

That was "complete nonsense," said the spokesman for the FAZ