Madeleine McCann suspect 'confessed to abducting and raping young girls' to cellmate

Madeleine McCann suspect Christian Brueckner has confessed to abducting and raping young girls, a court has been told.

The German paedophile, the man suspected of being behind the disappearance of Madeleine McCann in 2007, allegedly confessed in 2020 that he had previously snatched young girls and raped them on a bus he owned.

Laurentiu Codin, 50, told a court the 47-year-old made the confession while they were both on remand in the same prison.

He said: "There was talk of a girl, I don't know if what he said was true or not. He said that he had a bus and that he had taken her with it.

"He said he kept some of them, but not others, but he never said that he had killed them. We're talking about girls, not boys. Not all at once, always one at a time. He told me about two. He said that he had taken someone, had sex with her but he didn't kill her."

Asked how old his victim was, Codin said: "I don't want to get it wrong, but it was very young, tiny. I mean young.

"Each time when we were together he spoke about it because he was convinced that I was a paedophile."

Brueckner is serving a seven-year prison sentence for raping an American pensioner in Praia da Luz.

He is on trial in Germany for unrelated sex crimes allegedly committed in the Algarve between 2000 and 2017.

These include the alleged rape of Irish tour representative Hazel Behan, who was attacked in her apartment in Praia da Rocha in 2004.

Brueckner is also accused of raping a teenage girl in his Praia da Luz home and raping an elderly woman in her holiday apartment.

He also faces a child sex charge for allegedly exposing himself to a German girl on a beach in Salema in April 2007.

His final charge relates to an alleged indecent exposure in front of an 11-year-old in 2017. He denies the latest charges, as well as having any involvement in the McCann case.

Brueckner is also accused of raping a teenager in his Praia da Luz home, and of raping an elderly woman in her holiday apartment.

He also had a further child sex charge for allegedly exposing himself to a German girl on a beach in Salema in April 2007.

His last charge, which he denies relates to an alleged indecent exposure in front of an 11-year-old in 2017.

Brueckner also denies any involvement in the McCann case.

If he is found not guilty of the charges he is currently facing, it is likely the pressure on prosecutors to charge Brueckner over Madeleine's disappearance. The trial is due to finish in December.