A CONVICTED paedophile named by German prosecutors as a prime suspect in the disappearance of Madeleine McCann has issued his first public response.
Christian Brueckner has released a statement from his prison cell protesting his innocence and hitting out at the authorities for naming him in connection with the case.
In a handwritten note issued from his prison cell, the 44-year-old convicted rapist accused prosecutors of persecuting him, noting they had yet to bring charges against him despite naming him as a suspect a year ago.
“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,” the note read.
“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.”
Brueckner called on the two main German prosecutors behind the case, Hans Christian Wolters and Ute Lindemann, to resign.
Included in the note was a crude drawing by Bruckner of the two prosecutors ordering a “fillet of forensic” at a restaurant in an apparent reference to the lack of forensic evidence linking the German to the crime.
Christian Brueckner Image: EPA/CARABINIERI HANDOUTGerman prosecutors previously claimed to have evidence Brueckner killed McCann, however they have so far failed to bring any formal charges in connection with the case.
Brueckner is currently serving a seven-year prison sentence for the rap of a 72-year-old woman in 2005. The attack took place in the same region of Portugal as where McCann went missing.
Despite extensive searches and continued public appeals, the case remains open.
Though investigators in Germany suspect McCann is likely dead, Scotland Yard has yet to see any evidence indicating she has died and are continuing to treat her disappearance as a missing persons inquiry.
McCann, who was aged just three at the time, disappeared from her room at the holiday resort of Praia da Luz in Portugal in 2007.
