The Metropolitan Police are trying to bring the main suspect in the disappearance of Madeleine McCann to the UK to stand trial before the 20th anniversary of the incident next year. German national Christian Brückner was named prime suspect in her disappearance in 2022, while serving a prison sentence for the rape of an elderly woman.
“If the evidence is strong enough to extradite the prime suspect and try him here, that is what we would seek to do,” a Scotland Yard source told The Telegraph crime editor Martin Evans. “Clearly, there are numerous hurdles but our priority at the moment is to amass the strongest evidence we can against that prime suspect.”
‘Diplomatic and legal row’
The force “believes it can gather a strong enough case” for the Crown Prosecution Service to authorise charges against Brückner, said The Telegraph. A “small team of specialist detectives” are handling the missing person case, though they are building evidence for the CPS for suspected abduction and murder.
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Telecoms data placed his phone in Praia da Luz around an hour before the abduction in 2007, and he had been “suspected of burgling hotel rooms and breaking into apartments and villas” in the area. In 2021, the lead prosecutor on the German investigation into Brückner, Hans Christian Wolters, said that he was “100% sure” that Brückner had murdered Madeleine McCann.
But despite Brückner remaining the only suspect in the McCann case, no charges were brought against him before he was released after his most recent sentence in September last year. Last year, he refused to be interviewed by the Met, just days before he was due to be released from prison.
Attempts to bring Brückner to British shores could provoke a “diplomatic and legal row”, said The Times. Despite the 2021 introduction of the EU-UK Trade and Cooperation Agreement – a reciprocal extradition agreement – Article 16 of the German constitution retains the right to overrule extradition of its citizens to non-EU countries. If Germany refused to hand him over, it is understood that the Met would be “committed to ensuring that he still faces charges in Germany or in Portugal”.
‘Dropped off the radar’
Since his release from Sehnde prison last autumn, Brückner has “drifted around northern Germany”, “rarely staying in the same place for more than a few weeks”, said The Telegraph. Though his current whereabouts are unknown, he must wear an “ankle tag” as a condition of his release, living “under constant German police surveillance”.
He had initially relocated to Kiel on Germany’s north coast, into sheltered housing because he had reportedly “run out of money”. Following local “outcry” and the leak of his address online, he had to be escorted away from the area by German authorities. Since then, he is thought to have been living in a “makeshift campsite” in woodland near the city.
In November 2025, he was approached by ITV News reporters, “asking whether it was true that he had killed Madeleine”, said The Telegraph. Brückner responded by shouting at the news crew, and “knocked over a reporter’s microphone without answering”. After another failed attempt to relocate to a private flat, this time in Braunschweig in March 2026, he has “dropped off the radar”.