A suspect has been indicted in Germany at the request of Portuguese justice as part of the investigation into the disappearance of the British girl Madeleine McCann, which had caused an international stir almost fifteen years ago, announced Thursday evening the prosecutor of Portimao (south).
The suspect, whose identity has not been confirmed, was indicted on Wednesday, the prosecution said in a statement.
But this twist comes as the German authorities claim since 2020 to have evidence of the murder of little Maddie, identifying a German repeat pedophile, “Christian B.”, as the main suspect.
This man is currently serving a prison sentence for the rape of a 72-year-old American woman in 2005 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 gave rise to an exceptional international campaign to try to find her. Photos of little Maddie, with her bobbed light brown hair and big clear eyes, have gone viral.
After 14 months of controversial investigations, marked in particular by the indictment of the parents, before they were cleared, the Portuguese police closed the case in 2008 before reopening the file five years later.
“The file had been reopened following the appearance of new elements”, explained to AFP a spokesperson for the public prosecutor’s office, specifying that since the investigation was continuing “with the cooperation of the English and German authorities”.
But it was not until June 2020 that the case suddenly accelerated, when the Brunswick prosecutor’s office announced that it had become certain that the girl was dead and that its suspicions related to a 43-year-old man, then in detention in Kiel. , in northern Germany, for another matter.
According to German investigators, he lived at the time of the events a few kilometers from the hotel in Praia da Luz where the child disappeared. In custody, “Christian B.” had to be placed in solitary confinement to prevent him from being attacked by fellow prisoners, we then learned from the same source.
After having been omnipresent in the media in the months following Madeleine’s disappearance, her parents have maintained a relative silence for several years from which they only wanted to come out in the event of a major twist in the affair.
