Madeleine McCann suspect Christian Brueckner’s trial suspended after judge ‘tweeted Jair Bolsonaro should be killed’

For free real time breaking news alerts sent straight to your inbox sign up to our breaking news emails

Sign up to our free breaking news emails

Please enter a valid email address

Please enter a valid email address

SIGN UP

I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy policy

The sexual assault trial of the prime suspect in the Madeleine McCann case has been suspended after one of the judges allegedly called for the killing of Jair Bolsonaro in a tweet.

Christian Brueckner was due to stand trial on Friday at the Braunschweig state court in northern Germany over multiple sexual offences he is alleged to have committed in Portugal between 2000 and 2017, which are unrelated to the British girl’s disappearance.

The convicted rapist – who has been named in the media but is known as Christian B in Germany because of the country’s strict privacy laws – is accused of three counts of rape and two of sexual abuse of children.

The start of the trial was delayed because of long queues to get into the courthouse, German news agency DPA reported. Then the trial was adjourned within moments of opening after the defence cited social media posts indicating a lay judge might be biased.

The court postponed the trial by a week to rule on whether the lay judge should be removed over tweets in which she allegedly called for the killing of the former Brazilian president and of an animal torturer.

Brueckner has called the trial “ridiculous”, mockingly telling Mail Online: “I hope [they] will find some answers to [their] questions soon.”

The 47-year-old German’s appearance at the trial on Friday marked the first time he had been pictured in public since being connected to missing Madeleine in 2020. However, Brueckner has not been charged in her case.

He spent many years in Portugal, including in the resort of Praia da Luz around the time when Madeleine, who was three at the time, vanished from her bedroom during a family holiday there in 2007. He has denied any involvement in her disappearance.

He is currently serving a seven-year prison sentence in Germany for a rape he committed in Portugal in 2005.

In October 2022, prosecutors filed charges in the case that has now been suspended. Defence lawyer Friedrich Fulscher has said the defence will seek the suspect’s acquittal on all counts.

Speaking outside court on Friday about the accusations that led to the adjournment, Mr Fulscher said: “Such a lay judge has no business participating in a fair criminal trial.”

German media reported that lawyers had also cited the lay judge’s work as a child psychologist as a potential source of bias in a case involving the sexual abuse of several children.

Prosecutors have said that, at an unspecified time between 2000 and 2006, the suspect allegedly tied up and raped an elderly woman in her holiday apartment in Portugal. He is accused of beating the victim several times with a whip and recording the incident on video.

During the same period, it is claimed that he tied a German-speaking girl aged at least 14 to a wooden post in the living room of his residence in Praia da Luz, allegedly beating her with a whip and forcing her to perform oral sex.

The defendant also stands accused of gaining access at night to the apartment of an Irish woman, then aged 20, in Praia da Rocha in 2004, before raping her, tying her to a table and whipping her.

In separate cases in 2007 and 2017, it is claimed that he exposed himself to girls aged 10 and 11.

The case is being heard in Braunschweig after a higher court ruled that judges in the city have jurisdiction, overturning an earlier decision that they did not. That ruling centred on questions about where the suspect’s last residence was in Germany before he went abroad and then to prison.

The court has set 29 trial sessions through to late June.