According to the Attorney General's Office of the District of Faro, the defendant was identified this Wednesday by the German authorities, as part of a request for international judicial cooperation issued by the Public Ministry of Portugal.

The investigation into the circumstances surrounding the disappearance of Madeleine McCann in 2007, is directed by the Department of Investigation and Criminal Action (DIAP) of Faro – Portimão section, with the assistance of the Judiciary Police, the statement said.

The investigation has been carried out with the cooperation of the English and German authorities, they add.

Christian Brückner is currently serving another prison sentence in Germany for a drug trafficking conviction.

In June 2020, the prosecutor's office in Braunschweig opened a case against 44-year-old Brückner, based on "material evidence" for the kidnapping and murder of Madeleine McCann.

Madeleine disappeared from the tourist apartment that her family rented in Praia da Luz, Algarve, on the night of May 3, 2007, when she was 3 years old, taken from the room where she slept with her two siblings.

To this day it is unknown what happened to the British girl, in a case that led to a lawsuit by her parents against the inspector of the Judicial Police who led the investigation and who wrote a controversial book in which the parents appeared as the main suspects.

Years later, a German prosecutor claims to have collected evidence of Brückner's alleged involvement in the child's disappearance, and it was even announced that an analysis of his cell phone showed him at the time in the vicinity of the tourist village where Madeleine disappeared.

Christian Brückner is due to stand trial this year for the rape of a 20-year-old woman committed in Portugal, according to the weekly Spiegel reported in December.

Spiegel added that the case of the 20-year-old German woman has similarities with the 2005 rape of a 72-year-old American citizen in Praia da Luz, Algarve, a crime for which Christian Brückner has already been sentenced to seven years in prison in Germany.