A man was charged in Germanyat the request of the Portuguese justice, for the disappearance in 2007 of the British girl Madeleine McCannwhich shocked the world, the Portimao prosecutor’s office (southern Portugal) reported on Thursday.
The suspect, whose identity was not released, was charged on WednesdayThe prosecution said in a statement.
German authorities claim since 2020 that they have evidence of Maddie’s murderdisappeared in Portugal at the age of 3, and They point to a German recidivist pedophile as the main suspectidentified as Christian B.
The man is currently serving a prison sentence for the rape. of a 72-year-old American woman in 2005 in southern Portugal.
Madeleine McCann -Maddie- disappeared on May 3, 2007 shortly before his fourth birthday in Praia da Luza tourist destination in the south of Portugal where his parents were on vacation with a group of friends.
Her disappearance gave rise to an exceptional international campaign to try to find her. The photos of the girl, with brown hair and light eyes, went around the world.
After 14 months of controversial investigations, in which the parents were blamed, the Portuguese police archived the case in 2008 to reopen it five years later.
But it was not until June 2020 that the case accelerated when the prosecutor’s office in Brunswick (Germany) pointed to a 43-year-old man arrested for another case as responsible and assured that the girl would be dead.
“Christian B” is a 45-year-old sex offender who has already been convicted of child abuse in Germany.
According to the British press, the subject lived and worked between 1996 and 2007 in the south of Portugal, where he would have committed several crimes, robberies in hotels and apartments and the rape of an elderly American woman 15 years ago.
“Christian B” moved during that period in a van that was seen in Praia da Luz, where the McCann family was on vacation when the minor disappeared.
In this sense, the German police a few years ago had requested the collaboration of witnesses, hoping to solve the disappearance that kept Europe on edge in the summer of 2007.
The subject had previously been between the list of 600 suspects handled by the prosecution in the framework of the so-called “Operation Grange”, but it was not until 2017 that more evidence was found once morest him, and then thanks to the “close cooperation” between the German, British and Portuguese police following information received by Scotland Yard it was possible to find his whereregardings.
