For free real time breaking news alerts sent straight to your inbox sign up to our breaking news emails
Sign up to our free breaking news emails
The sexual assault trial of the prime suspect in the Madeleine McCann case has been suspended after one of the judges allegedly called for the killing of Jair Bolsonaro in a tweet.
Christian Brueckner was due to stand trial on Friday at the Braunschweig state court in northern Germany over multiple sexual offences he is alleged to have committed in Portugal between 2000 and 2017, which are unrelated to the British girl’s disappearance.
The convicted rapist – who has been named in the media but is known as Christian B in Germany because of the country’s strict privacy laws – is accused of three counts of rape and two of sexual abuse of children.
The start of the trial was delayed because of long queues to get into the courthouse, German news agency DPA reported. Then the trial was suspended within moments of opening after the defence cited social media posts indicating a lay judge might be biased.
The court postponed the trial by a week to rule on whether the lay judge should be removed over tweets in which she allegedly called for the killing of former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro and of an animal torturer.
“Such a lay judge has no business participating in a fair criminal trial,” defence lawyer Friedrich Fuelscher told reporters outside the court.
German media reported that lawyers also cited the lay judge’s work as a child psychologist as a potential source of bias in a case involving the sexual abuse of several children.
Brueckner is facing multiple charges but the case is unrelated to Madeleine’s disappearance
((c) dpa Pool)
The 47-year-old German has not been charged in the McCann case. Friday marks the first time he has been pictured in public since he was connected to the missing child in 2020.
Brueckner spent many years in Portugal, including in the resort of Praia da Luz around the time Madeleine, who was aged four at the time, vanished from her bedroom while on a family holiday there in 2007. He has denied any involvement in her disappearance.
He is currently serving a seven-year prison sentence in Germany for a rape he committed in Portugal in 2005.
Prosecutors filed charges in the case adjourned on Friday in October 2022. Defence lawyer Friedrich Fülscher has said the defence will seek the suspect’s acquittal on all counts.
Brueckner has called the trial ridiculous, mockingly telling MailOnline: “I hope [they] will find some answers to [their] questions soon.”
Madeleine vanished from her bedroom while on a family holiday in the resort of Praia da Luz in 2007
(PA)
Prosecutors have said that, at an unspecified time between 2000 and 2006, the suspect allegedly tied up and raped an elderly woman in her vacation apartment in Portugal. He is accused of beating the victim several times with a whip and recording the incident on video.
During the same time period, it is claimed he tied a German-speaking girl aged at least 14 to a wooden post in the living room of his residence in Praia da Luz, allegedly beating her with a whip and forcing her to perform oral sex.
In June 2004, the defendant stands accused of gaining access at night to the apartment of an Irish woman then aged 20 in Praia da Rocha before raping her, tying her to a table and whipping her.
In separate cases in 2007 and 2017, it is claimed he exposed himself to girls aged 10 and 11.
Gerry and Kate McCann, parents of four-year old Madeleine McCann
(AP2007)
The case is being heard in Braunschweig after a higher court ruled that judges in the city have jurisdiction, overturning an earlier decision that they did not. That ruling centered on questions over where the suspect’s last residence was in Germany before he went abroad and then to prison.
The court has set 29 trial sessions through to late June.
MailOnline reported Bruecker was transferred to Schnedebruch prison, near Hannover, for the duration of the trial after he complained of ill-treatment by guards at his previous prison Oldenburg, in northern Germany, where he was in a secure isolated unit.
He told the newspaper: “My situation didn’t change at all. I just moved prison. I’m still totally isolated. Since [sic] more than two years now. I’m still not allowed to talk with anybody else than to my lawyers and to my punishers [guards].”
More follows on this breaking news story…