An undated handout photograph released by the Metropolitan Police in London in 2020 shows Madeleine McCann who disappeared in Praia da Luz, Portugal in 2007. Photo: AFP / Metropolitan Police
Portuguese police will carry out a new search this week at the request of German authorities investigating the 2007 disappearance of three-year-old Madeleine McCann, a spokesperson told AFP Monday.
The British toddler was never found after going missing from the resort in Praia da Luz where she was with her family, one of the most high-profile missing person cases in history.
Police said it will carry out "a wide range of actions" between Tuesday and Friday near the southern Portugal seaside resort of Lagos, where the girl disappeared on 3 May, 2007.
The move is part of a warrant issued by the Braunschweig public prosecutor's office, in northern Germany, which is conducting a preliminary investigation into Christian Brueckner, suspected by German authorities of killing McCann, the Portuguese police spokesperson said, confirming information from British and Portuguese media.
"All the evidence seized by police will, with prior authorisation from the national public prosecutor's office, be handed over to agents of the German federal criminal police," the spokesperson added.
Brueckner is currently serving a seven-year prison sentence for the 2005 rape of an American woman aged 72 at the time, in Praia da Luz, the town where Madeleine McCann disappeared.
Christian Brueckner Photo: Getty Images / Italian police
He was acquitted in October 2024 in a trial in Germany for two sexual assaults and three rapes committed between 2000 and 2017 in Portugal.
"As part of the investigation into the Madeleine McCann case, criminal proceedings are currently underway in Portugal," Christian Wolters, a spokesman for the public prosecutor's office in Braunschweig (which is also known as Brunswick), told AFP.
British police said it was "aware of the searches" conducted by German law enforcement.
"The (British) police services are not on-site but we will assist our international colleagues wherever needed," a British police spokesman told AFP.
The last search in the case occurred in May 2023.
German justice officials said in 2020 they thought Brueckner was involved in the girl's disappearance, a globally resonant criminal mystery where false leads and twists were numerous.
Maddie, as she was frequently called, disappeared from the holiday apartment where she was staying with her parents while they were having dinner nearby.
Her disappearance sparked an international campaign and extraordinary media mobilisation.
At the time of the incident, Brueckner lived on the Portuguese Algarve coast, near the McCanns' vacation spot, and a mobile phone registered to him pinged near their lodging on the night of Maddie's disappearance.
His sentence theoretically runs until September 2025.
- AFP
