Processes
Suspect in Maddie case in court
View of a room in the Braunschweig Regional Court. photo
© Swen Pförtner/dpa
British journalists are also traveling to Braunschweig for the trial against Christian B. However, the district court is not concerned with the three-year-old who disappeared in 2007. What is the German accused of?
Among other things, he is said to have raped a then 20-year-old from Ireland in her apartment. The crimes are said to have occurred between December 2000 and June 2017. Defense attorney Friedrich Fülscher is seeking an acquittal for Christian B., as he previously told the dpa. The Maddie case will not be heard in the trial in Braunschweig.
The Madeleine McCann case
The convicted sex offender has been under investigation for several years on suspicion of murder in the Madeleine McCann case. The three-year-old British girl disappeared on May 3, 2007 from an apartment complex in Praia da Luz, Portugal. German investigators believe Maddie is dead, although no body has been found yet.
No charges have yet been brought against the 47-year-old in this case. Fülscher said he had not yet had access to the files regarding these allegations. He therefore cannot comment on it, but assumes that his client is innocent.
29 hearing dates scheduled
A total of 29 trial dates have been scheduled for the rape trial against Christian B. in Braunschweig; according to this plan, a verdict could be pronounced on June 27th. According to a court spokeswoman, no witnesses have been called for the first day of the trial. The program includes the reading of the indictment.
In October 2022, the Braunschweig public prosecutor’s office presented an indictment of more than 100 pages after investigations in several European countries. His lawyer initially left it open whether the defendant would comment on the allegations on Friday.
The disappearance of three-year-old British girl Madeleine McCann caused horror across Europe in 2007. Accordingly, the Braunschweig trial attracted great media interest, including in Great Britain. The case of the woman from Ireland who was allegedly raped by Christian B. in 2004 is a recurring topic in the British and Irish media. The Daily Mail newspaper quoted the witness as saying: “I can’t wait to look my tormentor in the eyes and see him in court.”
More sexual crimes
The defendant is also said to have surprised and raped an unknown 70 to 80-year-old woman in the bedroom of her holiday apartment and filmed it. He is also said to have recorded the rape of the Irish woman in Praia da Rocha with a video camera. In both cases, the masked attacker is said to have tied up the women and beat them with a whip. According to the public prosecutor’s office, the defendant tied a German-speaking teenager, who also remained unknown, to a wooden post in a living room, beat her and forced her to have oral sex.
In addition, in 2007 he is said to have grabbed a ten-year-old girl’s wrist on the beach in Salema and masturbated in front of her; in 2017, according to the indictment, a similar act followed in front of an eleven-year-old girl in Bartolomeu de Messines. The girl ran to her father and Christian B. was arrested by the Portuguese police.
Seven year prison sentence
The Würzburg native is currently serving a seven-year prison sentence for raping an American woman in 2005 and is currently incarcerated in Sehnde near Hanover. The crime scene was Praia da Luz, the place where Madeleine McCann disappeared in 2007. The first rape trial against Christian B. in Braunschweig in 2019 almost went unnoticed.
In June 2020, a call for witnesses on the ZDF program “Aktenzeichen XY … unsolved” surprisingly made it public that the German sex offender was suspected of having kidnapped and killed the three-year-old. According to the public prosecutor’s office, the investigation into Maddie’s case is continuing.