The main suspect in the disappearance of three-year-old British girl Madeleine McCann, has been cleared by a German court of rape and sexual abuse in an unrelated trial.
Christian Brückner, 47, was acquitted of carrying out five offences in Portugal between 2000 and 2017. He is already serving a seven-year jail term in Germany for rape.
Brückner has not been charged in the case of Madeleine McCann, who disappeared in Portugal in 2007 and has never been found.
Brückner’s defence team had argued he should be cleared because of a lack of evidence, although prosecutors had called for the court in Braunschweig in northern Germany to impose an additional 15-year jail term.
Brückner’s existing seven-year jail term imposed by the court in Braunschweig in 2019 for raping an American pensioner ends next September, according to prosecutors.
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