The man suspected of the murder of young Brit Madeleine McCann is suspected of five other sex crimes and offenses committed in Portugal between 2000 and 2017.
The main suspect in the Maddie case, a 45-year-old German woman currently in custody, has been charged with five other alleged rapes and pedophile acts committed in Portugal between 2000 and 2017.
In custody in Kiel, northern Germany, he is charged with three alleged rapes and two sexual assaults on children, the Braunschweig public prosecutor said. This man, who lived in Portugal for many years, was identified by German investigators as the main suspect in the murder of the British girl in 2020.
But investigations are ongoing and German prosecutors have not yet charged them with the murder of Madeleine McCann, known as Maddie, who disappeared on May 3, 2007, just before her fourth birthday, in the seaside resort of Praia da Luz, south of Portugal, where she went on holiday with her parents and friends.
Filmed Assaults
He is now charged in Germany with five other sex crimes and offenses committed in Portugal between 2000 and 2017, raising his profile as a repeat offender.
The charges relate to the rape of a 70- to 80-year-old woman, committed between 2000 and 2006 and filmed by him. The victim who had been attacked at his second home had also been flogged. He also faces charges for tying a naked 14-year-old German girl to a pole, then whipping her and forcing her to perform oral sex. The scene was also filmed here
The third charge relates to the rape of a 20-year-old Irish woman on June 16, 2004 in Praia da Rocha, in whose apartment he entered from the balcony. The last two charges concern sexual assault against a 10-year-old German girl on a beach in Faro district on April 7, 2007 and on June 11, 2017 in Bartolomeu de Messines against an 11-year-old Portuguese girl.
The indictment, which comprises a total of one hundred pages, was preceded by “many years of very intensive and costly investigations in several European countries,” explains the Braunschweig public prosecutor’s office, which is responsible for the investigation because the suspect lived in Portugal before moving to this city.
“My colleagues are more likely to be working on these other cases in order to be able to close this site in the near future. When it’s over, we’ll only take care of Maddie,” said Hans Christian Wolters, spokesman for the Braunschweig public prosecutor’s office, in April of the AFP news agency about the ongoing investigations.
Controversial Investigations
The accused has already been convicted of sexual assaults on children, among other things, recalls the public prosecutor’s office and specifies that he is currently serving a seven-year prison sentence for a rape also committed in Portugal in 2005.
The investigation into the disappearance of Madeleine McCann “is ongoing,” the Braunschweig public prosecutor assured on Tuesday. “Given the ongoing investigation, it is not possible to provide any further information on the findings at this time,” he said.
The child’s disappearance sparked an extraordinary international campaign to try to find her. Photos of Maddie with her bobbed light brown hair and big light eyes have gone viral.
After 14 months of controversial investigations, marked in particular by the indictment of the parents, who were subsequently exonerated, the Portuguese police closed the case in 2008 before reopening the case five years later.
Everything only accelerated suddenly in June 2020, when the public prosecutor’s office in Braunschweig announced that the girl’s death was certain and that her suspicion was based on the current suspect, who was then arrested as part of another affair.
SEE ALSO – Soon to be the first specialized court against sexual violence in Quebec