(Hanover, Germany) Mechanical shovel, sniffer dogs and rakes: the German police combed a working garden near Hanover on Tuesday in connection with the mysterious disappearance of the little Briton Maddie McCann, in 2007 in Portugal, a new development in this story with twists and turns.
Posted on 28 July 2020 at 6 a.m. 28 Updated to 07 h 39
Marion PAYET with David COURBET in Berlin
France Media Agency
This case has experienced a sudden acceleration since the beginning of June with the identification of a new suspect, Christian B., 40 years, a German repetitive pedophile already convicted of rape in Portugal and currently in detention.
“These searches are linked to our investigation into the Maddie McCann case,” Julia Meyer, spokesperson for the Brunswick prosecutor's office, told AFP without giving further details.
Several police vehicles were present on the scene of this subdivision located on the western outskirts of the city, at the edge of a road, searched by around twenty police officers using shovels, rakes and dogs, according to an AFP journalist. Investigators also used a mechanical shovel.
These allotment gardens are very popular in Germany. They allow city dwellers to benefit from a small green space where they grow fruit and vegetables, organize barbecues with friends and rest on weekends.
The suspect lived in Hanover
This research could confirm the convictions of the German investigators who, recently, were the first to solemnly affirm that Madeleine McCann, who disappeared there 13 years old and then 3 years old, had died.
In mid-June, the Brunswick public prosecutor's office explained that it had “evidence or concrete facts” supporting the conviction of the girl's death but not “forensic evidence” in the sense that, for example, remains of the body were reportedly found.
Christian B. is currently in detention in Kiel, in northern Germany, on another case.
At the time of the events he lived a few kilometers from the hotel, in the small Portuguese seaside resort of Praia da Luz, where the child had disappeared. While in detention, he had to be placed in solitary confinement to prevent him from being attacked by fellow detainees.
He is suspected of the murder of the little girl, who was on vacation with her parents and their two other children in Portugal at the time of her disappearance.
According to his lawyer quoted in the media, the man denies any involvement in Maddie's disappearance.
According to the local newspaper Hannoversche Allgemeine , he had lived in Hanover, in northern Germany, to 2007.
Errors
According to German media, investigators discovered children's swimsuits in a trailer belonging to the suspect. They also allegedly got their hands on USB drives containing thousands of pedophile images, some of which depict the suspect.
He is also the subject of a request for extradition to Portugal for the rape of a 72 year old woman.
The case gave rise to several controversies, in particular around obvious errors by the German police. She would have informed Christian B. as soon as 2007 that she suspected him, which could have given her the possibility of destroying any evidence.
In 2007, the German police were put on the trail of the man following a widely watched broadcast in Germany, which allows the police to call witnesses.
The German investigators are also studying a possible parallel with another case of disappearance, that of little Inga in 2015 in a forest of the German region of Saxony-Anhalt.
Several other unsolved murders of children and adolescents in Europe, notably in Belgium and the Netherlands, are also the subject of checks to establish whether the suspect could be involved.
