German prosecutors today asked for a 15-year sentence for the main suspect in the disappearance of Madeleine McCann, who is on trial for a series of sex crimes in a separate proceeding from the investigation into the little British girl.

Christian Bruckner, a German man already jailed for other crimes, is on trial for sexual assaults and rapes committed between 2000 and 2017 in Portugal.

Prosecutor Ute Lindemann today described him as a “dangerous, sadistic psychopath” during her summation, expressing fears that he would repeat his crimes. The court’s decision will be handed down next week.

The defendant has been on trial in Braunschweig (northern Germany) since February for three rapes and two sexual assaults, cases unrelated to that of Madeleine, for which he has not been formally charged.

The 40-year-old, a serial rapist, is reportedly currently serving a seven-year sentence in Germany for the 2005 rape of a then 72-year-old American woman in Praia de Luz, the community in the Algarve province of southern Portugal where Madeleine McCann went missing.

In one of the cases for which he is on trial, he is charged with suspected of sexually assaulting a young German girl, aged 10, on a beach in April 2007, a few months before Madeleine McCann disappeared.

In another case, he is accused of stripping in front of a Portuguese child, aged 11, at a playground.

He is also on trial for raping a 70-year-old woman, whom he had tied up and beaten inside her summer accommodation, a child of about 14 inside his home, and a 20-year-old Irish woman whose house he managed to enter by walking through the adjacent balcony.

In 2020, the German judiciary announced that it considered Christian Bruckner to be the prime suspect in the disappearance of Madeleine McCann, the little Maddie, a baffling crime that has shocked the world.

In 2007, Maddie disappeared at the age of 3 from the apartment where she was holidaying with her parents while they were dining nearby.

The investigation stagnated for years until this German man, with a heavy criminal record, who was living at the time of the events within a few kilometers of the accommodation rented by Maddie’s family, caught the attention of the authorities.

His defense, however, disputes any involvement in the child’s disappearance, arguing that the prosecution has no evidence to warrant charges against him.