process
Maddie case: Defendant remains silent about allegations
On the second day of the trial against Christian B. at the Braunschweig Regional Court, the defense went on the offensive. photo
© Julian Stratenschulte/dpa Pool/dpa
The second day of the trial against Christian B., who is also a suspect in the Maddie case, is marked by motions from the defense. The 47-year-old’s lawyers demand that their client be acquitted.
The 47-year-old has been under investigation for years on suspicion of murder in the case of little Maddie, who disappeared from a Portuguese holiday resort in 2007, as surprisingly became public knowledge in June 2020. The then three-year-old British girl was kidnapped from an apartment in the Algarve. German investigators believe Madeleine McCann is dead, although a body has never been found.
Defense speaks of “media prejudgment”
The case is not the subject of the current trial. The other five accused crimes are being tried in Braunschweig because Christian B. had his last German residence in the Lower Saxony city. Defense attorney Fülscher criticized the fact that Christian B. has been under “continuous global media fire” since June 2020. He complained that the results of the investigation had not been presented to the defense in the Maddie case and spoke of “media prejudgment”. “We are not negotiating the most famous missing person case of the post-war period here,” emphasized the lawyer from Kiel.
In the Braunschweig trial, Christian B. is accused of raping an unknown 70 to 80-year-old woman in the bedroom of her Portuguese holiday apartment between the end of 2000 and spring 2006 and filming it. During the same period, he is said to have tied an unknown young woman, at least 14 years old, to a wooden post, beaten her and forced her to have oral sex. According to the defense, these acts could have occurred earlier and are therefore time-barred.
In addition, Christian B. is said to have brutally raped a 20-year-old woman from Ireland several times in Praia da Rocha in 2004. She will be heard as a witness during the trial. In her almost 30-minute indictment, senior public prosecutor Ute Lindemann described in detail how the masked rapist tied up, gagged and tortured the young woman in her apartment.
“You’re scared, aren’t you?” the defendant is said to have asked the tied woman after two rapes. He then whipped the young woman and asked her to kneel in front of the sofa with a knife in her hand. At that moment the witness was in fear of death, said the senior public prosecutor. She thought he was going to cut off her head. The rapist packed up his things and fled. The witness still suffers psychologically today, and scars on the backs of her knees remind her of being tied up with clothesline-like ropes.
Regarding this accusation, the defense attorney said that the witness had experienced something terrible that night: a masked man forced her to have sex. She is subjectively convinced that it was Christian B.. However, there are sources of error. The witness also described a cross-shaped scar on the perpetrator’s thigh. This excludes his client as the perpetrator. “The person who committed this act was not the defendant,” said Fülscher.
In 2007 and 2017, the defendant is said to have masturbated in front of a ten-year-old and an eleven-year-old girl respectively. From the defense’s perspective, this could just be pseudo-memories, influenced by the suspicion of murder against Christian B. becoming known in the Maddie case.
The second day of the trial was also characterized by numerous further evidence applications from the defense. Among other things, Christian B.’s lawyers requested that evidence that was discovered in 2016 on the defendant’s property in Neuwegersleben (Saxony-Anhalt) not be used. The data carriers, images and documents, including depictions of child abuse, were found during an illegal search.