German police described man as “murder suspect” who allegedly killed Madeleine McCann
Berlin:
The German man suspected of kidnapping and murdering British girl Madeleine McCann has refused to speak about the case, one of his lawyers said on German television.
“Christian B. is not making any statement on the matter at the moment and we ask you to understand that in his defense, we will not do it either,” Friedrich Fuelscher told the NTV news channel.
German police on Wednesday raised hopes that the 13-year-old mystery of the three-year-old “Maddie” could finally be resolved when it revealed that it was investigating a 43-year-old man for his disappearance from the Portuguese seaside resort of Praia da Luz in 2007.
German police called the man a “murder suspect”, who could have killed the girl.
The suspect, named Christian B. by the German media, has a history of previous sexual offenses, including child abuse and rape.
Currently detained in Kiel prison in northern Germany, the suspect is serving a prison sentence for drug trafficking.
The suspect had to be transferred to an isolation cell for his safety, said Claus Christian Claussen, regional justice minister for the state of Schleswig-Holstein.
He is not allowed to leave his cell unless accompanied by guards and not at the same time as other detainees to avoid attacks against him, the minister said during a hearing before the regional parliament.
Defense lawyers who had been charged with his defense left their mandate without giving any reason.
They were replaced by a new team who threatened to prosecute the acquaintances of their client who described him as aggressive and suspect.
Madeleine disappeared from her family’s vacation apartment on May 3, 2007, a few days before her fourth birthday, while her parents were dining with friends at a nearby tapas bar.
His disappearance has sparked one of the greatest research of its kind in recent years.
Despite a wide range of suspects and theories about what happened, no one has ever been sentenced for his abduction and no trace of her has been found.
After Christian B. was identified as a new suspect, German police said they were investigating the link between the man and the case of another missing child in Germany.
The five-year-old girl named Inga from the city of Schoenebeck in Saxony-Anhalt in 2015 disappeared without a trace in the woods during an outing with her family.
(With the exception of the title, this story was not edited by GalacticGaming staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
