PROSECUTORS leading the case against the alleged abductor of Madeline McCann are 100% convinced they have the man who did it.
Despite having found no body or DNA evidence to support the case, lead prosecutor Hans Christian Wolter said he has enough evidence to bring a charge against the suspect.
He told the Irish Mirror that he was “100 per cent convinced” that the British child was killed by Brueckner, a convicted paedophile, but that he wants to “strengthen” the prosecution’s case before pressing charges.
He said: “It is now possible that we could charge. We have that evidence now.
“But it’s not just about charging him – we want to charge him with the best body of evidence possible.
“When we still have questions, it would be nonsense to charge rather than wait for the answers that could strengthen our position.”
As Brueckner is already in jail for separate offences, including the rape of an Irish woman in the Algarve in 2004, the team are taking time to gather as much evidence as possible, bolstering their case before it is brought to court.
Though confident of Breuckner’s guilt, the prosecutor conceded he had no direct evidence of Madeline’s death.
He told the Irish Mirror: “All I can do is ask for your patience. I personally think a conclusion will be reached next year. We have no body and no DNA but we have other evidence. Based on the evidence we have, it leads to no other conclusion.
“I can’t tell you on which basis we assume she is dead. But for us, there’s no other possibility. There is no hope she is alive.”
Phone records place Brueckner near to Praia da Luz in Portugal when Madeleine disappeared in 2007. Living in a camper van at the time, he allegedly received a call in close proximity to the McCann’s holiday apartment at the time of the disappearance. The German national first came onto the police radar as a suspect in 2017, but was not publicly named until last June.
Brueckner denies any involvement in her disappearance and despite declining to talk to the police, issued a response to the allegations.
In a handwritten statement issued from his prison cell he said: “Charging someone with a crime is one thing. It is something completely different, namely an unbelievable scandal, when a public prosecutor starts a public prejudicial campaign before proceedings are even opened.
“You have proved worldwide, through arbitrary convictions in the past and through scandalous prejudicial campaigns in the present, that you are unsuitable for the office of an ‘advocate for the honest and German people who trust in justice’, and that you bring shame to the German legal system.”
