Madeleine McCann suspect Christian Brueckner 'confessed to abducting young girls to cellmate'

Prime suspect Christian Brueckner in the disappearance of Brit Madeleine McCann confessed to kidnapping and raping young girls, a former cellmate has told a court in Germany

Madeleine McCann suspect Christian Brueckner confessed to abducting and raping young girls, a former cellmate dramatically claimed today.

The German paedophile is suspected of abducting and killing the three-year-old British youngster in Praia da Luz in May 2007. Brueckner, 47, allegedly confessed in 2020 that he had previously snatched young girls and raped them on a bus he owned. Laurentiu Codin, 50, told a court that the German confided in him while they were both on remand in the same prison.

He said: “There was talk of a girl, I don’t know if what he said was true or not. He said that he had a bus and that he had taken her with it. He said he kept some of them, but not others, but he never said that he had killed them. We’re talking about girls, not boys. Not all at once, always one at a time. He told me about two. He said that he had taken someone, had sex with her but he didn’t kill her.”

Asked by the judge how old his victim was, Codin said: “I don’t want to get it wrong, but it was very young, tiny. I mean young. Each time when we were together he spoke about it because he was convinced that I was a paedophile.”

Brueckner is currently serving a seven-year prison term for raping an American pensioner in Praia da Luz. He is standing trial in Germany on unconnected sex crimes allegedly carried out in the Algarve between 2000 and 2017. They include the alleged rape of Irish tour rep Hazel Behan, who was attacked in her apartment Praia da Rocha in 2004.

Brueckner is also accused of raping a teenage girl in his Praia da Luz home and raping an elderly woman in her holiday apartment. He also faces a child sex charge for allegedly exposing himself to a German girl on a beach in Salema in April 2007. His final charge relates to an alleged indecent exposure in front of an 11-year-old in 2017.

Prosecutors appear no closer to proving he was behind Madeleine’s disappearance - despite claiming they have proof she is dead. They face the nightmare scenario of seeing their prime suspect walk free if he is cleared in the latest trial. If Brueckner is found not guilty, he could be freed from prison in the early part of next year.

A not guilty verdict would increase the pressure on them to charge Brueckner over Madeleine’s disappearance. The trial is due to end in December.