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CRIME

‘Concrete evidence’ that Madeleine McCann is dead, says German prosecutor

Authorities in Germany have "concrete evidence" that missing British girl Madeleine McCann is dead, Brunswick prosecutor Hans Christian Wolters told AFP Wednesday.

Published: 17 June 2020 15:30 CEST
Updated: 17 June 2020 18:39 CEST
'Concrete evidence' that Madeleine McCann is dead, says German prosecutor
The parents of Madeleine McCann hold up a photo of their daughter in London in 2012. Photo: DPA

“It is concrete evidence, facts that we have, not mere indications,” Wolters said, adding that he was unable to disclose exact information.

“We have no forensic evidence of Madeleine's death, such as a corpse,” he added.

Police raised hopes in early June that the mystery over the disappearance of three-year-old “Maddie” could finally be solved when they revealed they are investigating a 43-year-old over her disappearance from the Portuguese holiday resort of Praia da Luz in 2007.

The suspect, who was not named by police but identified as Christian B. by German media, has a history of previous sex offences including child sex offences and rape.

READ ALSO: What we know so far about German suspect in 'Maddie' case

Prosecutors had said they were working on the assumption that Madeleine is dead, though authorities in Britain had continued to treat her disappearance as a missing persons case.

Letter sent

Wolters said German authorities have written to Madeleine's family, but declined to give details of the content of the letter. He also confirmed that Christian B. has applied to be released early on probation from prison in Kiel, where he has currently served two thirds of a sentence for drug trafficking.

However, Wolters said the suspect will not be freed from custody as there is a case pending against him over the rape of an elderly woman in Portugal.

A court in Brunswick had sentenced Christian B. to seven years in prison last December for the assault against the 72-year-old American tourist in 2005 — in the same seaside village of Praia da Luz where Maddie went missing.

But the sentence has not yet been finalised pending extradition technicalities.

During the trial for that case, two witnesses said they had found a gun, video cameras and several tapes at Christian B.'s home in Portugal, according to a report in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung newspaper citing court documents.

One of them later watched some of the footage and saw a man raping an elderly woman tied to a bed, the report said.

Cold cases

Madeleine went missing from her family's holiday apartment on May 3, 2007, a few days before her fourth birthday, as her parents dined with friends at a nearby tapas bar.

According to police, Christian B. lived in the Algarve region of Portugal between 1995 and 2007.

He made a living doing odd jobs in the area where Madeleine was taken, and also burgled hotel rooms and holiday flats.

Police believe he was living in a white Westfalia camper van with yellow skirting at the time of the kidnapping and they are keen for witnesses who remember seeing the vehicle back then to come forward.

Christian B. has not been called in for questioning and his lawyers say he has so far refused to speak about the case.

The latest development in Maddie's case has prompted European investigators to reopen several cold cases of missing children.

In Germany, prosecutors are combing through the files to see if the suspect had anything to do with the disappearance of a five-year-old girl named Inga from the town of Schoenebeck in Saxony-Anhalt in 2015.

Authorities in Belgium said they have reopened a probe into the 1996 murder of a German teenager, Carola Titze, 16, in the resort town of De Haan on the Belgian coast.

And in Portugal, the stepfather of missing eight-year-old girl, Joana Cipriano, has asked authorities to explore possible links.

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CRIME

Germany arrests Syrian man accused of plotting to kill soldiers

German authorities said Friday they had arrested a 27-year-old Syrian man who allegedly planned an Islamist attack on army soldiers using two machetes in Bavaria.

Published: 13 September 2024 11:17 CEST
Germany arrests Syrian man accused of plotting to kill soldiers

The suspect, an “alleged follower of a radical Islamic ideology”, was arrested on Thursday on charges of planning “a serious act of violence endangering the state”.

The man had acquired two heavy knives “around 40 centimetres (more than one foot) in length” in recent days, prosecutors in Munich said.

He planned to “attack Bundeswehr soldiers” in the city of Hof in northern Bavaria during their lunch break, aiming “to kill as many of them as possible”, prosecutors said.

“The accused wanted to attract attention and create a feeling of insecurity among the population,” they said.

German security services have been on high alert over the threat of Islamist attacks, in particular since the Gaza war erupted on October 7th with the Hamas attacks on Israel.

Police shot dead a man in Munich this month after he opened fire on officers in what was being treated as a suspected “terrorist attack” on the Israeli consulate in Munich.

The shootout fell on the anniversary of the kidnap and killing of Israeli athletes at the 1972 Munich Olympic Games by Palestinian militants.

The 18-year-old suspect had previously been investigated by authorities in his home country Austria on suspicion of links to terrorism but the case had been dropped.

The incident capped a string of attacks in Germany, which have stirred a sense of insecurity in Germany and fed a bitter debate of immigration.

Three people were killed last month in a suspected Islamist stabbing at a festival in the western city of Solingen.

READ ALSO: ‘Ban asylum seekers’ – How Germany is reacting to Solingen attack

The suspect in the attack, which was claimed by the Islamic State group, was a Syrian man who had been slated for deportation from Germany.

A federal interior ministry spokesman said if an Islamist motive was confirmed in the latest foiled attack, it would be “further evidence of the high threat posed by Islamist terrorism in Germany, which was recently demonstrated by the serious crimes in Mannheim and the attack in Solingen, but also by acts that were fortunately prevented by the timely intervention of the security authorities”.

The Solingen stabbing followed a knife attack in the city of Mannheim in May, which left a policeman dead, and which had also been linked to Islamism by officials.

Germany has responded to the attacks by taking steps to tighten immigration controls and knife laws.

READ ALSO: Debt, migration and the far-right – the big challenges facing Germany this autumn

The government has announced new checks along all of its borders and promised to speed up deportations of migrants who have no right to stay in Germany.

The number of people considered Islamist extremists in Germany fell slightly from 27,480 in 2022 to 27,200 last year, according to a report from the federal domestic intelligence agency.

But Interior Minister Nancy Faeser warned in August that “the threat posed by Islamist terrorism remains high”.

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