Madeleine McCann suspect Christian Brückner cleared of separate sex crime charges in Algarve

Madeleine McCann suspect Christian Brückner has been cleared of all charges at his rape trial in Germany.

He had been on trial accused of raping women and exposing himself to children in the Algarve, Portugal.

The 47-year-old is suspected of abducting the three-year-old back in 2007 and then killing her. German police named him as the prime suspect in Maddie's disappearance in June 2020.

However, this trial was unrelated and Brückner has not been charged in the case of the missing girl. He has denied any involvement in Madeleine's disappearance.

Christian Brückner has been cleared of the crimes alleged to have taken place in the Algarve (Alexander Koerner/Getty Images)

The man is already serving a seven-year jail term in Germany for rape and today's (8 October) decision saw him acquitted of carrying out three rapes and two instances of sexual abuse in Portugal between 2000 and 2017.

Brückner's lawyer, Friedrich Fülscher, said yesterday that acquittal was 'the only correct outcome of the case'.

A key witness had earlier told the court how he had broken into the man's Portugal home and found videos involving the rape of a girl and a woman aged between 70 and 80.

And an Irish woman also claimed at the trial she had been raped at the age of 21 by a masked man who broke into her Portugal flat in 2004.