The prime suspect in the Madeleine McCann disappearance will not immediately face charges over a string of alleged rapes, a court has ruled.
The major setback means any trial will likely now face a lengthy delay.
A court in the German city of Braunschweig, also known as Brunswick, east of Hanover, has rejected a possible rape trial for the convicted paedophile Christian Brueckner after it deemed itself not to have jurisdiction over the case, The Sun reports.
The court lifted the arrest warrant against him, German newspaper Bild reported, citing Brueckner’s lawyer Friedrich Fülscher.
Brueckner, 45, has been held since June 2020, after he was named as the main suspect in McCann’s disappearance. In 2002, Portuguese prosecutors named him as an “official suspect”.
Based on evidence that was uncovered during the McCann investigation he was charged with several sexual offences allegedly committed in Portugal at the time she went missing.
In October last year, Brueckner was charged by German prosecutors with three offences of aggravated rape and two offences of the sexual abuse of children, in alleged crimes spanning 17 years between 2000 and 2017.
The charges were not in connection with McCann.
A possible trial at the Braunschweig Regional Court was expected to take place this year.
But the court has deemed it has no jurisdiction over the case after establishing that the suspect’s last registered place of residence in the city was in 2016.
Mr Fülscher said: “The Federal Court of Justice has long since decided that where a suspect is registered does not matter when establishing a place of residence.
“Before he was arrested, the accused lived on his property in Neuwegersleben.”
Neuwegersleben is a small town located 70km south of Braunschweig.
Bild has suggested that the public prosecutor’s office and the court in Magdeburg or Frankfurt would be in charge of the case.
The fact that the arrest warrant is lifted does not mean Brueckner will be released.
He is currently serving a seven-year sentence in Germany over the rape of a pensioner in Praia da Luz, the same area in southern Portugal where Madeleine went missing in 2007 aged three.
German prosecutors previously said he broke into the woman’s apartment in a mask, tied her and raped her before hitting her with a whip.
He is alleged to have sexually assaulted a 14-year-old German-speaking girl at his home in Praia da Luz.
In a separate reported attack on June 16, 2004, a 20-year-old Irish woman was allegedly raped at knifepoint after the suspect broke into her holiday apartment in Praia da Rocha, a 35-minute drive from Praia da Luz.
The alleged attack was filmed before the suspect escaped via the apartment balcony.
He is also accused of sexually assaulting a 10-year-old German girl on April 7, 2007, less than a month before McCann’s disappearance.
A final charge against Brueckner relates to an incident on June 11, 2017.
He was arrested after allegedly pulling down his trousers and performing a sex act in front of an 11-year-old girl during a festival in Bartolomeu de Messines, around a 40-minute drive from Praia da Luz.
Last month German police admitted Brueckner will likely not be charged this year but insisted authorities would have enough to charge him next year.
Speaking to the Portuguese daily Expresso investigator Hans Christian Wolters said that “the investigation is ongoing but it’s going to take a lot longer”.
Brueckner has denied any involvement in McCann’s disappearance and claimed in a letter penned from his prison cell that the decision to charge him was linked to a “fairy tale” indictment.
Madeleine, from Leicestershire in the English midlands, went missing from her bed in a holiday apartment on the evening of May 3, 2007.
This story appeared in The Sun and is reproduced with permission.