In 2012, the British police received elements of the Judiciary Police file on the disappearance of Madeleine McCann in which there were hundreds of people, including the German now announced as a suspect, to whom he did not attach importance.
“At least since 2012, when the Orange operation started, the English police received from the Judiciary Police all the elements that were in our process regarding the case of the child’s disappearance. If Christian Bruckner was there, as hundreds of people were there and if the suspicions about that person were so evident, he would have been the target of diligences requested by the English, and which have always been authorized in Portugal, but never requested, “said the director today. – Deputy of the Judiciary Police to the Lusa agency.
Faced with criticisms of the PJ’s performance published by some British media, Carlos Farinha refutes them and affirms perpetually that “the lack of relevance that is attributed to the PJ in relation to Bruckner is the same that can be attributed to Scotland Yard or the Metropolitan Police, at least since 2012, because the data about the citizen was also known to them ”.
The suspicions of the involvement of a German citizen in the disappearance of the three-year-old English child in Praia da Luz, in the Algarve, only increased in 2017 when another German citizen provided information to Scotland Yard.
“After that, with the help of the PJ, it was possible to decode who this information was about, reaching the current suspect, with the German police (BKA) having been activated,” said the Deputy Director of the Judicial Police.
For Carlos Farinha, “in theory everything could have been different”, but “in 2007 [altura do desaparecimento de Maddie] and in 2012 it was not known what was known in 2017 and the subsequent developments were also the result of the crossing of information with the PJ. There were testimonies obtained in Germany and Portugal ”.
Regarding the work of the three policemen in this case, which is already 13 years old, the deputy director of the PJ denies that there is any “malaise” between institutions, guaranteeing that if there was always “frank and open cooperation, even when there were divergent perspectives ”About the case.
“In recent times there has been an increase in conviction on the part of researchers and, through the public appeal, it may be possible to collect more information regarding 2007 that is still unknown. The fact that the suspect was made public and the appeal made was an initiative of the German police BKA, who are convinced that they are waiting to receive additional information from the German community ”, said Carlos Farinha.
“The data is released and now we are in the stage of receiving things that may be relevant, we will analyze them together and then decide the next steps from a procedural point of view, being certain that what will be done next may be a consensual decision by three policemen or each one to do what they understand because each one has a legitimate process ”, he highlighted.
Although, since 2017, the investigation has focused on the German citizen, “some suspicions have grown, which unfortunately are still not enough to constitute the accused and the prosecution,” he said.
One of the unavoidable names when it comes to Maddie’s disappearance is the former PJ inspector from Portimão Gonçalo Amaral, who is still the target of criticism from the English press and who even had a legal dispute with the child’s parents.
On the subject, Carlos Farinha recalled that Gonçalo Amaral left the PJ in 2008 and that “after that many people worked and work in the process”, regretting that the name continues to be related to the investigation.
Christian Bruckner, 43, is being held in Germany for raping a 72-year-old American woman in 2005 in the Algarve, where he lived between 1995 and 2007.
Following BKA’s public appeal, the German prosecutor’s office in Braunschweig assumed that Maddie must be dead.
Madeleine McCann disappeared on May 3, 2007, a few days before she turned four, from the room where she slept together with her two younger brothers, in an apartment in a tourist village in Praia da Luz and her disappearance became a media case on a global scale.
British police first formed a team in 2011 to review all available information, opening a formal inquiry the following year, having so far spent close to £ 12 million (€ 14 million) in the process.
The Judiciary Police (PJ) reopened the investigation in 2013, after the case was dismissed by the Attorney General’s Office in 2008, clearing three defendants, Madeleine’s parents, Kate and Gerry McCann, and another Briton, Robert Murat.
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