BRAUNSCHWEIG, Germany: A German court on Tuesday acquitted a man who is also under investigation in the 2007 disappearance of British toddler Madeleine McCann in a trial on charges of unrelated sexual offenses.
\nThe Braunschweig state court acquitted the 47-year-old German national, who has been identified by local media as Christian Brueckner, of two counts of rape and two of sexual abuse.
\nHowever, Brueckner will remain in prison another year because he is still serving a seven-year sentence for rape in a different case, German news agency dpa reported.
\nBrueckner had been on trial since February over offenses he is alleged to have committed in Portugal between 2000 and 2017. Defense lawyers had pointed to what they labeled a lack of evidence and witnesses who weren\u2019t credible, and suggested he might not have been charged if he hadn\u2019t also been a suspect in the McCann case.
\nProsecutors had argued he should be given a 15-year prison sentence and kept in preventive detention once he has served it.
\nThe verdict can be appealed, dpa reported.
\nBrueckner has not been charged in the McCann case, in which he is under investigation on suspicion of murder. He spent many years in Portugal, including in the resort of Praia da Luz around the time of Madeleine\u2019s disappearance there in 2007. He has denied any involvement in her disappearance.
\nHe is currently serving a seven-year prison sentence after being convicted in 2019 by the Braunschweig court for the rape of a 72-year-old American woman in Portugal in 2005.
\nThe Braunschweig state court has jurisdiction because Brueckner had his last German residence in that city in Lower Saxony.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
BRAUNSCHWEIG, Germany: A German court on Tuesday acquitted a man who is also under investigation in the 2007 disappearance of British toddler Madeleine McCann in a trial on charges of unrelated sexual offenses. The Braunschweig state court acquitted the 47-year-old German national, who has been identified by local media as Christian Brueckner, of two counts …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":71289,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-71272","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/71272","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=71272"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/71272\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":71294,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/71272\/revisions\/71294"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/71289"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=71272"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=71272"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=71272"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}