As part of the investigation into the disappearance of British Madeleine McCann, who caused an international stir almost fifteen years ago, a suspect has been charged in Germany at the request of the Portuguese judiciary, the Portimao floor announced on Thursday evening.
This twist comes as German authorities have claimed since 2020 to have evidence of little Maddie’s murder, identifying a German repeat pedophile, “Christian B.”, who is already in custody, as the prime suspect. This man is currently serving a sentence for the 2005 rape of a 72-year-old American man in southern Portugal.
Madeleine McCann, known as Maddie, disappeared on May 3, 2007, shortly before her fourth birthday, in Praia da Luz, a seaside resort in southern Portugal, where she was vacationing with her parents and a group of friends. Her disappearance sparked an extraordinary international campaign to find her. Photos of little Maddie with her bobbed light brown hair and big light eyes have gone viral.
New things
After 14 months of controversial investigations, marked in particular by the parents’ charges before they were resolved, the Portuguese police closed the case in 2008 before reopening the case five years later.
“The file was reopened after new elements emerged,” a spokesman for the public prosecutor’s office told AFP, specifying that the investigation would continue “with the cooperation of the English and German authorities”. But it was not until June 2020 that the case suddenly accelerated when the Braunschweig public prosecutor announced that the girl’s death had been confirmed and that their suspicion referred to a 43-year-old man, who was then in custody in Kiel. in northern Germany, for another cause.
According to German investigators, at the time of the events he was living a few kilometers from the hotel in Praia da Luz where the child disappeared. In detention, “Christian B.” had to be placed in solitary confinement to prevent him from being attacked by fellow inmates, we then learned from the same source.
After their parents were a ubiquitous media presence in the months following Madeleine’s disappearance, her parents have maintained a relative silence for a number of years, which they would only come out of in the event of a major turn in the affair.