Day: September 23, 2025

New twist in Madeleine McCann probe as Brit cops set to swoop in Germany after prime suspect Christian Brueckner freed

BRITISH Madeleine McCann cops are set to swoop in Germany to access key files and revisit witnesses.

Met officers are in the initial stages of putting a visit together.

Christian Brueckner in court in Braunschweig, Germany.
Dan Charity

Madeleine McCann cops are set to swoop in Germany following the release of prime suspect Christian Brueckner[/caption]

Madeleine McCann in a white bucket hat and pink dress.
EPA

It comes after the UK cops flew to Portugal to interview a couple who hosted Brueckner around the time Madeleine vanished[/caption]

They are stepping up their efforts after prime suspect Christian Brueckner left jail last week following a seven-year term for rape.

It comes after the UK cops flew to Portugal this month to interview a German couple who hosted Brueckner around the time Madeleine, three, vanished in Praia da Luz in 2007.

A police source in Germany, where the fiend is living in an unnamed town, said: “We’re expecting Met officers could ask to come any time now.

“They have requested all the permissions they need to look into full case files and access any translations.

“They will also have the ability to speak with all the witnesses.”

Yesterday The Sun revealed Brueckner had been bragging he can “solve the scandal of the century” despite never sharing information with police.

Brit investigators were considering speaking with shop manager Farouk Salah-Brahmin who revealed the rapist asked to buy a phone without registering it to his ID card, meaning the device would have been untraceable.

The ID card has yet to be endorsed with travel restrictions meaning he could leave German borders where his ankle tag would no longer work.

The Met’s Operation Grange declined to comment.

Brueckner has always denied involvement.

A young girl with blonde hair and heterochromia (one blue eye and one brown eye) looks directly at the camera, wearing a red velvet top.
Maddie went missing in May 2007

What are the key dates in Madeleine’s disappearance?

  • May 3, 2007 – Kate and Gerry McCann leave their children asleep in their holiday apartments while they eat eat a nearby Tapas restaurant. At 10pm Kate finds Madeleine missing.
  • May 14, 2007 – Property developer Robert Murat is quizzed by cops and named an “arguido” or formal suspect.
  • August 31, 2007 – The McCanns launch libel action against Tal e Qual – a newspaper that claimed the couple killed Madeleine.
  • September 7, 2007 – Kate and Gerry McCann are made “arguidos”.
  • September 9, 2007– Madeleine’s parents return to England with their two-year-old twins, Sean and Amelie.
  • October 2, 2007– Lead detective Goncalo Amaral is taken off the case after criticising British police in a newspaper interview.
  • July 21, 2009 – Portuguese police lift the “arguido” status of both Robert Murat and the McCanns, and shelve the investigation.
  • July 24, 2009 – Detective Goncalo Amaral alleges that Madeleine died in her family’s holiday flat the day she went missing in a book called The Truth Of The Lie. In a documentary for Portuguese television he claims there was no abduction and the McCanns had hidden her body.
  • May 12, 2011 – On Madeleine’s eighth birthday, Mrs McCann publishes a book about her disappearance. Scotland Yard launches a review into the case after a request from Home Secretary Theresa May, supported by Prime Minister David Cameron.
  • April 25, 2012 – Scotland Yard officers say they believe Madeleine McCann is still alive. A new picture is released, showing what she might look like as a 9-year-old, and they call on the Portuguese authorities to reopen the case, but Portuguese police say they have found no new material.
  • July 4, 2013 – Two years into a review of the case, Scotland Yard launch its own investigation into Madeleine’s disappearance. They claim to have “genuinely new” lines of inquiry and identify 38 people of interest including 12 Britons.
  • October 24, 2013– Portuguese police reopen their case after new lines of inquiry are found.
  • November 27, 2013 – Met Police Commissioner Sir Bernard Hogan-Howe called for British and Portuguese police to work together.
  • April 28, 2015 – Detective Goncalo Amaral is ordered to pay Kate and Gerry McCann £209,000 each in damages by a court in Lisbon over claims made in The Truth Of The Lie and bans further sales of the book.
  • October 28, 2015 – Scotland Yard reduces the number of officers working on Madeleine’s disappearance from 29 to four.
  • January 31, 2017 – Portugal’s Supreme Court rules against Kate and Gerry McCann’s £418,000 libel claim. The court claims freedom of expression laws protect Detective Goncalo Amaral’s claims in the book.
  • March 11, 2017  – The Home Office grants Operation Grange an extra £85,000 to continue from April until September.
  • September 28, 2017 –  British police are granted £154,000 to keep the probe alive until March 2018.
  • November 2017 – Cops moved the search to Bulgaria as they tried to find a “woman in purple” they wanted to speak to.
  • May 2018 – Another round of funding, thought to be in the region of £150,000 is granted.
  • September 2018 – An extra six months of funding is requested from the Home Office amid fears the cash will run out by the end of the month.
  • November 2018 – More funding, thought to be in the region of £150,000 is granted
  • November 2018 – Former detective David Edgar, who once helped search for Madeleine, says she could still be alive and imprisoned, with “no idea who she is”. He believes she is being kept against her identity in a “lair” and could even still be in Portugal.
  • November 2018 – UK police are re-examining a theory Madeleine left the apartment to look for her parents. They are also looking at whether her disappearance was the result of a kidnapping or burglary gone wrong.
  • June 2019 – Another round of funding, believed to be £300,000 of government cash is granted
  • June 2019 – Portuguese police are probing a “new clue and suspect” after talks with British officers, according to a bombshell local media report.
  • August 2019 – A DNA expert in the US offers to analyse samples to provide an investigative lead.
  • June 2020 – New prime suspect revealed as a German paedo, in a huge breakthrough in the 13-year investigation.
  • April 2022 – Christian Brueckner, aged 45 at the time, is officially declared a suspect by Portuguese prosecutors.
  • February 8, 2024 – Prime suspect Christian Brueckner is seen for the first time in public since 2020 being led into an ambulance to receive treatment after being attacked in prison.
  • February 26, 2024 – Christian Brueckner appeared before the court facing charges of three rapes and two sex assaults but no charges involving Maddie.

September 23, 2025
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