Christian Brückner, a 47-year-old German, is already being detained for other crimes and risks a sentence of more than 15 years in prison for sexual assaults and rapes committed between 2000 and 2017 in Portugal.

In October last year, the Portuguese Judicial Police clarified that, in the investigation into the disappearance of Madeleine McCann, in the Algarve in 2007, steps are still being taken to clarify the situation, adding that contacts were made with Madeleine McCann's relatives.

Detained in Kiel, in northern Germany, Christian Brückner has already been convicted in 2019 of the rape of a 72-year-old American tourist, in 2005, in the Portuguese town of Praia da Luz, where Madeleine McCann disappeared on May 3, 2007.