{"id":938256,"date":"2026-05-05T01:18:16","date_gmt":"2026-05-05T01:18:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/938256\/"},"modified":"2026-05-05T01:18:16","modified_gmt":"2026-05-05T01:18:16","slug":"why-brexit-could-stop-madeleine-mccann-suspect-being-tried-in-britain","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/938256\/","title":{"rendered":"Why Brexit could stop Madeleine McCann suspect being tried in Britain"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Met Police is reportedly trying to bring the suspect in the Madeleine McCann<\/a> case to the UK for trial \u2013 but a Brexit-related rule may put a stop to it.<\/p>\n

The Telegraph<\/a> reported on Tuesday that a senior officer wants to get German Christian Brueckner<\/a> back here to stand trial for the girl\u2019s alleged abduction and murder.<\/p>\n

The force would like to have Brueckner, a convicted sex offender, stand trial at the Old Bailey and want to get the process started in time for the 20th anniversary of Madeleine\u2019s disappearance next year.<\/p>\n

Madeleine was three years old when she went missing from a resort in Portugal in 2007<\/a>, during a family holiday.<\/p>\n

Brueckner was living a mile away from the Praia da Luz hotel at the time.<\/p>\n

\"(FILES)Police want to bring convicted German sex offender Christian\u00a0Brueckner to the UK for trial over Madeleine McCann\u2019s alleged abduction and murder. (Picture: Moritz Frankenberg\/AFP via Getty Images)<\/p>\n

The Telegraph says that while serving a prison sentence in Germany for rape, Brueckner was named by British police as the main suspect in the girl\u2019s disappearance. However, no charges were laid<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Brueckner denies involvement in Madeleine\u2019s disappearance. In 2021, he wrote letters from his prison cell to the German newspaper Bild, calling the investigation into him an \u201cunbelievable scandal.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cFreedom of expression is not a basic right so that everyone can say and write what they want. Freedom of expression does not protect the majority,\u201d Brueckner wrote.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt protects the minority. It does not protect the most logical, most convincing or most popular views, but rather the outsider position.\u201d<\/p>\n

The German constitution prevents the extradition of its citizens to non-EU countries, which could lead Berlin to reject the request.<\/p>\n

Before Brexit, Brueckner could have been extradited to the UK without issue.<\/p>\n

Madeleine\u2019s parents, Kate and Gerry McCann, have held out hope of their daughter being found alive for many years.<\/p>\n

\u201cEven though the possibility may be slim, we have not given up hope that Madeleine is still alive and we will be reunited with her,\u201d they wrote on Facebook in 2022<\/a>, at the time that Brueckner was arrested.<\/p>\n

The case has remained in the headlines for decades, with police in Portugal conducting multiple unsuccessful searches<\/a> in an effort to find Madeleine.<\/p>\n

In February of last year, a woman from Poland was charged with stalking the McCann family<\/a>. She had claimed to be Madeleine and sent voicemails, emails and other communications to Kate and Gerry McCann.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Met Police is reportedly trying to bring the suspect in the Madeleine McCann case to the UK…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":938257,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5226],"tags":[802,748,188,2000,299,5187,1699,4884,36005,1413,3046,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-938256","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-brexit","8":"tag-brexit","9":"tag-britain","10":"tag-crime","11":"tag-eu","12":"tag-europe","13":"tag-european","14":"tag-european-union","15":"tag-great-britain","16":"tag-madeleine-mccann","17":"tag-met-police","18":"tag-portugal","19":"tag-uk","20":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/116519338735132754","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/938256","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=938256"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/938256\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/938257"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=938256"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=938256"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=938256"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}