Christian B. was sentenced in December 2019 to seven years in prison for the rape and theft of a 72-year-old American.
He contested the validity of the European arrest warrant which had enabled his arrest.
The Court of Justice of the European Union (ECJ) on Thursday rejected an appeal by the main suspect in the disappearance of little Briton Maddie McCann against a conviction for rape, which means her continued detention.
In a judgment consulted by AFP, the Court ruled that the prosecution for the rape of a septuagenarian in 2005 are legal since Italy, which had handed over the suspect, the German Christian B., to his country of origin as part of a European arrest warrant, has given the green light.
Christian B. was sentenced in December 2019 to seven years in prison by the Brunswick court, for the rape and theft of a 72-year-old American in 2005 in Portugal, in the same village of Praia da Luz where the little girl Madeleine McCann had disappeared in May 2007. But he challenged the validity of the European arrest warrant (EAW) under which he was apprehended in Italy in 2018 and seized the German Federal Court of Justice to challenge this conviction, the German court in turn seizing the Court of Justice of the EU, which sits in Luxembourg.
He had requested early release
The arrest warrant originally concerned a drug trafficking case for which Christian B. is currently serving a prison sentence.
But according to the Court, the Italian authorities, who had arrested him and handed him over to the German authorities, had indeed given their consent for him to be prosecuted for this rape case, and "he is no longer entitled to invoke the rule of the specialty relating to this first MAE ".
The 40-year-old had requested early release before the scheduled deadline of January 7, 2021 and could have been released if the ECJ had overturned the sentence for rape in Portugal.
Thursday's arrest means that when the prison sentence for drug trafficking ends, he will have to serve the one for rape.