Maddie case: Portuguese police to start new excavations

Sixteen years after Maddie's disappearance, the search resumes

Maddie case: Portuguese police to start new excavations

Sixteen years after Maddie's disappearance, the search resumes. The Portuguese police will begin new excavations to find the body of Madeleine McCann, who disappeared in 2007. These searches, requested by the German authorities, will take place near a roadblock, about fifty kilometers from the place where the girl mysteriously disappeared.

According to images from Portuguese television, a perimeter was delimited on Monday around the site which must be excavated from Tuesday. According to several local media, divers had already combed this area in 2008, but had found only remains of animals.

The Portuguese public prosecutor's office announced last year the indictment, at its request, of a suspect in Germany, within the framework of the investigation carried out in cooperation with the English and German authorities. According to German justice, it is Christian Brueckner, a repeat pedophile who lived for several years in southern Portugal. This man, who is serving a prison sentence for the rape of a 72-year-old American in 2005 in Portugal, had already been identified by German investigators in 2020 as the main suspect in the murder of the British girl. And, according to the Portuguese weekly Expresso, he used to go near the Arade dam, located in the municipality of Silves.