According to a statement from the Prosecutor’s Office in Faro, Portugal, a suspect has been formally named in the case of missing British toddler Madeleine McCann.
At the request of Portuguese police, German officials made the man an official suspect, although Faro prosecutors did not name him publicly. He hasn’t been charged yet.
It’s the first time since Madeleine’s parents, Kate and Gerry McCann, were designated suspects in 2007, that Portuguese authorities have named an official suspect in the case. They were eventually exonerated.
Madeleine was three years old when she vanished from her bedroom on May 3, 2007, while her parents were dining with friends nearby in the town of Praia da Luz during a family vacation in the Algarve region. She has never been discovered, despite a worldwide search, and no one has ever been charged with her disappearance.
In June 2020, German prosecutors revealed that they had proof that a man imprisoned for another crime, known at the time as Christian B., killed the British toddler, but that there was insufficient evidence to accuse the suspect in court. The spokesman for the State Prosecutor’s Office in Braunschweig, Lower Saxony, informed CNN in June 2020 that his office assumes McCann is dead.
However, the 45-year-old suspect has not been charged with any felony in connection with the disappearance since then. He is currently imprisoned in Germany for rap**** a woman in the same Algarve region where Madeleine vanished in 2007.
Friedrich Fülscher, the suspect’s lawyer, told CNN on Friday that he was still defending him, and that the suspect’s name was Christian Brueckner.