A German prosecutor has claimed that Portuguese police still think Madeleine McCann's parents are responsible for her disappearance and has criticised working with them.
Hans Christian Wolters said the working relationship with local authorities in the Algarve is “cumbersome” and that they have different ideas of what happened to the toddler who went missing in 2007, reported the Daily Telegraph.
Mr. Wolters previously said the authorities have “evidence” that the three-year-old was killed after she was snatched from Praia da Luz on May 3 and Christian Brueckner is currently the only suspect.
Brueckner - a convicted paedophile - is currently serving time at a prison in Kiel, northern Germany, for a drug offence and has been moved into isolation for his own safety. Claus Christian Claussen, the justice minister of the northern state of Schleswig-Holstein, told a parliamentary hearing yesterday that is was to prevent “assaults by fellow prisoners”.
He added that Brueckner is being “monitored closely” and is receiving counselling, as reported by The Times. Portuguese detectives who probed the disappearance of Madeleine McCann have been left facing tough questions after it emerged they identified the German paedophile who is now the chief suspect in 2007 - but “discarded” him.
Mr Wolters, the state prosecutor in Braunschweig said: “Working together with authorities” in south European countries, such as Portugal “is generally more time-consuming. They take a long time for everything and the French or British police are faster.”
“We do stay in contact with the colleagues in Portugal, but everything is more cumbersome. I think the Portuguese officials still think that Maddie's parents are responsible for her disappearance.”
It comes amid claims Brueckner attacked his British ex-girlfriend in a jealous rage, then hid waiting for her under the bed. He viciously assaulted the woman, who does not want to be named, after she hugged another man, by slamming her head against the wall of a ladies toilet at a bar in the Algarve.
Brueckner then broke into her flat and hid under the bed, waiting for her to return, but when she got back he calmly left, saying “goodbye” on his way out, as reported by the Daily Mirror. The couple ended their relationship in mid-2005, and he then embarked on a stalking campaign against her, but was never charged, despite Portuguese police being called out twice to deal with him.
She has now revealed the convicted paedophile could be responsible for killing Madeleine.
In another development Tiziano Ilg, who previously hired the German to work at his restaurant, has claimed 'we all know' what happened to the child. Brueckner was hired just weeks after Madeleine's disappearance at the restaurant in Floral. Responding to an online news article about her disappearance on his Facebook profile he cryptically said: 'It's time to stop looking and stop imagining. We all know.'
