May 3 marked the 16th anniversary of the disappearance of the British girl Madeleine McCann, while she slept in a tourist apartment in Praia da Luz, in the Portuguese Algarve. All the time that has elapsed has not served to solve the case, but it has not been enough to forget it either. On Tuesday, the Judicial Police is expected to begin a search operation next to the Arade reservoir, in the Faro district, to try to find something related to the little girl. The search, in which British agents will also participate, has been requested by German investigators, who are trying to find out Christian Brückner’s role in the disappearance.
Brückner is serving a sentence in Germany for various sexual crimes that occurred in the Algarve between 2000 and 2017 against minors (unrelated to the McCann girl) and also against a 72-year-old American woman. For the German police, he became the main suspect in Madeleine’s disappearance. The prosecutor leading the investigation, Hans Christian Wolters, even stated in an interview that he was convinced of Brückner’s guilt, although he also warned that the investigation was progressing slowly.
Last year, the Portuguese Prosecutor’s Office declared Brückner “arguido” (official suspect), among other reasons to avoid the prescription of the crime, which Portuguese law establishes at 15 years. Among the evidence that exists against the German prisoner is his presence in the surroundings of Praia da Luz on the night of the disappearance, verified thanks to his cell phone, and a conversation in which he presumes to know the whereabouts of the British girl at the time. three years.
On the night of May 3, 2007, Kate and Gerry McCann were having dinner with several friends at Tapa’s restaurant in the Ocean Club development, in Praia da Luz. The McCanns’ three young children were sleeping alone in the apartment when Madeleine was absent. The case initially unleashed a great wave of solidarity with the parents, but also intense international media coverage that influenced the development of the police process. Some of the initial suspects suffered great pressure and disturbances, such as Robert Murat, without their involvement in the events ever being corroborated. The parents also came to be declared suspects by the Portuguese police for almost a year.
This controversial decision would end up removing the Judicial Police inspector, Gonçalo Amaral, from the investigation, who would leave the force and write books with his theories about what happened. The McCanns denounced him in successive instances until reaching the European Court of Human Rights which, at the end of 2022, supported the decision of the Portuguese Supreme Court to acquit Amaral. The judges of the Portuguese high court considered that in the conflict between the right to honor and freedom of expression, the latter should prevail. Amaral believes that the investigation into Christian Brückner is without foundation. “It is a product of police fiction to clean up the image of the parents of the disappeared girl, and a scapegoat to whom the responsibilities of others are attributed,” he assured a year ago in an interview with EL PAÍS.
