The Prosecutor's Office assumes that Madeleine McCann is dead, a thesis that the parents of the little British girl, who disappeared 13 years ago, refuse to consider. "We assume that the girl is dead," Prosecutor spokesman Christian Wolter said today in a press briefing without the right to question so as not to hinder the ongoing investigation.

The new suspect who was reported yesterday and who has been identified as Christian Brueckner, 43, was sentenced in late 2019 by the Braunschweig Regional Court to seven years in prison for the rape of a 72-year-old American woman in Praia. gives light . The events occurred in 2005, a year and a half after Madeleine's disappearance. According to what the press that covered the process reported then, the accused broke into the old woman's home. He was masked and with a knife of approximately 30 centimeters. He tied her up and raped her. The woman suffered traumatic blows to the jaw and shoulders.

The Braunschweig court took up the case since it was in that German city that this individual had his last known residence. He is currently serving time in a prison in Kiel.

According to the Federal Criminal Office, this man has been among the suspects in the disappearance of the girl for years, although the information available at the time was not sufficient for her arrest. " There was a lot of evidence, but no evidence, " says a spokesman for the Federal Criminal Office.

A world-famous case

On May 3, 2007, Madeleine McCann, 3, disappeared from her room in the apartment where her family was staying at the Praia da Luz complex in Portugal while her parents, Kate and Gerry, ate with friends at a restaurant. near.

The apartment was raided while Madeleine and her two-year-old twin brothers slept, and local police concluded it was a kidnapping. The family expressed concern over an initial police response that they called slow.

In the following days, the McCanns turned to the media to help locate their daughter, and the case garnered worldwide attention, with footballers such as David Beckham and Cristiano Ronaldo calling for an investigation. He even went so far as to offer a millionaire reward for some clue to help locate the girl, for whom the writer JK Rowling provided financial help.

The case became so mediatic that possible warnings of Madeleine began to be reported around the world. However, the initial investigation by the Portuguese police did not reach important leads and detectives began to focus attention on the parents themselves.

In September 2007, Gerry and Kate McCann were questioned by the police as formal suspects. In July 2008, the Portuguese police abandoned their investigation for lack of evidence and exempted the McCanns. The couple successfully sued several British tabloids for defamation after they had suggested they were involved in their daughter's disappearance.

In 2015, a Portuguese court also forced a former Portuguese investigator - involved in the first investigations - to pay the McCanns damages for alleging in a book that the girl had died in an accident and the parents had covered it up.

In 2011, British Prime Minister David Cameron asked British police to re-investigate the case, after being contacted by the McCanns. In 2013, the British police started their own investigation, Operation Grange, in which 38 potential suspects were identified. That same year, the Portuguese prosecution ordered that the case be reopened by the local police.

The new investigation leads the Portuguese police to interview four suspects who were exempted; meanwhile, a search by British detectives on abandoned land near Praia da Luz also made little progress.

Later, London detectives suggested that Madeleine may have been one of the victims of a series of sexual assaults against British children in Portugal, probably carried out by a single criminal, between 2004 and 2010. In 2017, a decade after Upon his disappearance, British detectives acknowledge that they will never be able to resolve the case even though the British government has continued to fund the investigation.

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