Court Ends Round-the-Clock Surveillance of Christian Brueckner After Finding It No Longer Necessary

Round-the-clock police surveillance of Christian Brueckner ended after a court ruled the monitoring was no longer necessary. German officers had watched him continuously since his release from custody in September 2025. Brueckner completed a seven-year sentence that month for the 2005 rape of a 72-year-old woman in Praia.

He was identified by German investigators in 2020 as the main suspect in the disappearance of Madeleine McCann, who vanished in Portugal on May 3, 2007. Brueckner has consistently stated he had no involvement in the child's disappearance. In secretly recorded footage shared online, he was filmed smirking as he climbed into a friend's vehicle to avoid officers assigned to monitor him.

"Yes, but Maddie f my life, you know, so why should I be sorry? She's f my life. The whole time. I can't go out of the street," Brueckner said in the recording. He added that officers "don't know where I am" because he left his house and entered the car.

When asked about crossing the German border, Brueckner said he was uncertain whether his electronic monitoring device would stop functioning outside the country. " Brueckner stated he was "not afraid" of extradition by British authorities. He denied committing the Praia rape, claiming the case involved torture and saying he intends to write a book about it.

"The whole world knows me as a rapist of an old woman, and this was not only a rape, this was really torture. But it wasn't me, and I can prove that it wasn't me," he said. He also stated, "I can't believe that he's still working," referring to German prosecutor Hans Christian Wolters.