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Belgian justice has reopened the investigation into the murder of a German teenager in 1996 over a possible link with Christian Brueckner, the new suspect in the case of Madeleine McCann's disappearance in Portugal in 2007, the prosecution said Thursday.

Caroline Titze was found dead, with the body mutilated, at age 16, in July 1996 on the Belgian coast. The Bruges prosecutor's office (north-west) "reopens the case regarding this murder," a spokesman for the public ministry told AFP without further details.

In addition, today it has been known that Brueckner does not want to talk about the case, according to one of the lawyers told the television channel n-tv. "Christian B. is not talking about this case at the moment and we ask you to understand that we as his advocates do not speak either," Friedrich Fülscher told this German news network.

German police announced last Wednesday that they were investigating Brueckner, who is serving a sentence for drug trafficking in the Kiel prison, northern Germany, as a possible perpetrator of Madeleine MacCann's disappearance when she was three years old.

Isolation cell

The 43-year-old recidivist pedophile has been isolated in a cell for security reasons , Schleswig-Holstein regional justice minister Claus Christian Claussen reported on Wednesday .

The suspect can only leave his cell in the company of a prison official and at different times from the rest of the detainees, he said during a hearing before the regional Parliament commission.

The two lawyers for the suspect who were in charge of his defense resigned without explanation and have been replaced by two other defenders who threatened to prosecute their client's acquaintances who described him as aggressive and suspicious.

The German, convicted on several occasions for sexual violence against minors, would have entered the McCann's apartment to rob, but when he was inside, he would have decided to take the little girl , according to German justice.

Other related cases

After thirteen years after the disappearance of 'Maddie', the identification of this new suspect has given the McCanns hope to clear up the deep mystery surrounding their daughter.

German justice also indicated that it is studying another disappearance in 2015 of Inga Gehricke , a five-year-old girl in Germany, who bears similarities to that of Madeleine McCann.

Brueckner has also recently been linked to the case of René Hasse , a six-year-old German boy who disappeared on June 21, 1996 (24 years and the same year as Caroline Titze) while on vacation with his mother and her partner in Aljezur, in the Portuguese Algarve and about 40 km from Praia da Luz.

René lost track of him when he went for a walk on the beach at night, after having dinner in a restaurant. The boy came forward, and took off his shirt and pants because he wanted to go into the water. The adults lost sight of him and never saw him again.

In accordance with the criteria of The Trust Project

Know more

  • Portugal
  • Belgium

'Madeleine case'The suspect in the Madeleine case, linked to the disappearance of another child 24 years ago in the Algarve

Sports And the third month soccer was resurrected. Money, health and love for a massive return

InvestigationThe German public prosecutor's office assumes that Madeleine McCann is dead

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