BERLIN –
Attorneys for a person who can also be underneath investigation within the 2007 disappearance of British toddler Madeleine McCann referred to as on Monday for him to be acquitted in his trial on fees of unrelated sexual offences.
Prosecutors final week urged the Braunschweig state courtroom to convict the 47-year-old German nationwide, who has been recognized by native media as Christian Brueckner, of two counts of rape and two of sexual abuse. They argued that he ought to be given a 15-year jail sentence and saved in preventive detention as soon as he has served it, although they mentioned he ought to be acquitted of a 3rd rape cost.
Nevertheless, the defendant’s defence staff mentioned on Monday that an acquittal could be the best final result. Lawyer Friedrich Fülscher informed the courtroom that “there was by no means a ample suspicion” in opposition to his shopper, the German dpa information company reported.
A verdict was scheduled for Tuesday.
Brueckner has been on trial since February over offences he’s alleged to have dedicated in Portugal between 2000 and 2017. Defence attorneys pointed to what they labelled an absence of proof and witnesses who weren’t credible, and Fülscher recommended he won’t have been charged if he hadn’t additionally been a suspect within the McCann case.
The suspect has not been charged within the McCann case, through which he’s underneath investigation on suspicion of homicide. He spent a few years in Portugal, together with within the resort of Praia da Luz across the time of Madeleine’s disappearance there in 2007. He has denied any involvement in her disappearance.
He’s presently serving a seven-year jail sentence in Germany for a rape in Portugal in 2005. Fülscher mentioned he would search to have that case reopened, citing new info that emerged from the present trial, dpa reported.
In July, the courtroom lifted an arrest warrant within the circumstances at stake within the present trial, citing an absence of “pressing suspicion” in opposition to the defendant. However he has remained behind bars due to the sentence he’s presently serving.