Lisbon (BLAZETRENDS)
At the request of the German authorities, and with the presence of English agents, the Portuguese police operation takes place at the Arade dam, some 50 kilometers from Praia da Luz, where the girl was kidnapped and one of the places frequented by the Prime suspect, Christian Brueckner.
After years of investigation, the German Christian Brueckner was constituted last year as “arguido”, a Portuguese figure that is used to designate the formal suspects on whom strong evidence falls, prior to the accusation, with the aim of avoiding the statute of limitations of the case.
16 years of mystery
On May 3, 2007, Madeleine disappeared from the apartment that her family had rented in Praia da Luz, where she was sleeping with her brothers -two two-year-old twins- while their parents had dinner with a group of friends in the same tourist complex.
Since then, the case has followed different lines of investigation, theories and suspects.
Among the theories considered, there was speculation about the accidental death of the girl at the hands of her parents, Kate and Gerry McCann, an idea that the Portuguese inspector who led the case, Gonçalo Amaral, defended tooth and nail.
Amaral came to publish a book with his hypotheses and the conflict with Maddie’s parents ended up in court.
the suspect
The case took a turn in 2020, when the authorities officially identified Brueckner, imprisoned in Germany for other crimes, as a suspect in the disappearance.
The German Prosecutor’s Office in Braunschweig works with the theory that Madeleine died at the hands of Brueckner, who has a long history of crimes for sexual abuse and pedophilia, some of them in Portugal.
Suspicions against him gained weight after he was extradited from Portugal to Germany in 2017 accused of a case of sexual abuse of minors in Greece.
Investigation of her movements showed, from her mobile phone trace, that she was near the holiday complex where the McCanns were staying the night Madeleine was abducted.
The entry Police are looking for Madeleine McCann again in the Algarve 16 years after her disappearance was first published in BLAZETRENDS Noticias.