Madeleine McCann suspect moved to own prison cell over safety fears
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The suspect in the Madeleine McCann case has been moved into a single jail cell for his own protection.
As police re-examine more unsolved murder and rape investigations, the prison authorities fear for Christian Brueckner’s safety.
He is currently serving sentences for drugs and rape in Kiel prison in Schleswig-Holstein, Germany’s most northern state.
The state’s justice minister, Claus Christian Claussen, said: “He is in a single cell for Christian Brueckner’s safety and security against possible attacks from other inmates.”
A handout photo made available by the Milan branch of Italy’s Carabinieri police force shows an undated photograph of 43-year-old German convict Christian Brueckner, whom investigators are treating as the main suspect in the as-yet-unsolved case of the 2007 disappearance of British child Madeleine McCann in Portugal EPA-EFE/CARABINIERI HANDOUT
Christian Brueckner, a 43-year-old German drifter, has applied for parole after completing two-thirds of his drugs sentence.
His lawyer says he has behaved well in prison.
A judge’s parole decision is expected early next week, but it is understood the state prosecutor and the jail authorities are opposing his release.
He is also challenging the legality of his extradition from Italy in 2018, which led to his arrest, conviction and seven-year sentence for the rape of an elderly American woman in Portugal in 2005.
Christian Brueckner, is the prime suspect in what the German authorities say is a murder investigation into Madeleine’s disappearance from her family’s holiday apartment in Praia da Luz on Portugal’s Algarve coast in 2007.
