Earlier this week, German prosecutors filed charges – for sexual assault of women and sexual abuse of children – against Christian Brückner the German man under investigation for the disappearance of British girl Madeleine McCann in 2007.
One of the charges focused on the rape in Portugal in 2004 of Irish woman Hazel Behan.
She was just 20 and working as a holiday rep when she was awoken by a masked, knife-wielding man who subjected her to a violent ordeal over several hours.
Brückner now stands accused of raping the Irish woman while she was tied and gagged after breaking into her apartment via a balcony at about 3am on June 16th, 2004.
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“The accused filmed large parts of the events with a video camera he had brought with him,” the prosecutor said in a statement. “While the accused later fled over the balcony, the victim managed to free herself and, crying, to ask for help.”
Defence lawyer for Brückner Friedrich Fülscher said he was “amazed” by the indictment. It “leaves out exculpatory aspects” for his client, he said, and was “based almost exclusively on the statements of two dubious witnesses about the content of missing video recordings”.
The scene of the attack on Ms Behan, Praia da Rocha, is a 30-minute drive from Praia da Luz, where three-year-old Madeleine McCann was abducted while on a family holiday in May, 2007.
Last year Brückner was named by Portuguese and German prosecutors as an official suspect in the little girl’s disappearance. So far no charges have been filed against him in that case.
He lived in the Algarve between 1995 and 2007 and is currently serving a seven-year term in Germany for the rape of a 72-year-old American woman in Portugal in 2005.
Irish Times Berlin Correspondent Derek Scally talks to In The News about Christian Brückner and the charges he now faces.
