Maddie McCann suspect acquitted in separate German sex-abuse trial

Christian B, the convicted rapist also suspected in the Madeleine McCann case, has been found not guilty by a German court in a separate trial on five allegations of serious sexual offences, reported dpa.

The 47-year-old B, who is not identified by his full name in line with German privacy rules, will remain in prison until September 2025 while serving a prison sentence for a separate rape conviction.

The verdict is not final, and prosecutors have already announced their intention to appeal. Christian B was charged at the trial in three rapes and two cases of sexual abuse of children, all of which occurred in Portugal between 2000 and 2017.

"The evidence we had was not enough to convict the defendant," the presiding judge, Uta Engemann, said in court on Tuesday. "We were dealing with unreliable witnesses, some of whom deliberately lied to the court."

Engemann also said it appeared that witnesses had been influenced by the extensive media coverage of the defendant, who she said had been portrayed "as a sex monster and child murderer" in the media.

B has not been charged in the 2007 disappearance of three-year-old Madeleine McCann, a British girl who vanished from a Portuguese resort where her family were on holiday.

But investigators have publicly named him as their chief suspect in the disappearance. The McCann case has attracted widespread international news coverage, particularly in the United Kingdom.

B, who has served multiple jail sentences for sex crimes, lived in southern Portugal's Algarve region between 1995 and 2007 at regular intervals.

The German judge in Tuesday's verdict detailed contradictions in the statements of the two witnesses who claimed to have seen videos of two of the three accused rapes.

During police interrogations in the previous rape trial in 2019 and as witnesses in the current trial, both had made completely different statements on many points. The two victims allegedly seen in the videos have still not been located.

The victim of the third rape, who testified before the court, had testified that she could recognize the accused by the colour of his eyes. The court also took issue with that as insufficient evidence of B's guilt.

B did not react to the verdict with an outward emotion. He wore a white shirt in court and, as on the previous days of the trial, a crumpled grey jacket.

His defence lawyers had argued for an acquittal on Monday, contending that there was not enough evidence and that witnesses in the case were not credible.

B himself did not testify or offer a statement during the trial.

Prosecutors had acknowledged that one of the rape charges against B remained unproven, but sought convictions on the remaining charges and asked for a 15-year prison sentence.

Prosecutors had also sought to have B held in custody beyond the end of his sentence as a potential threat to the public.

Although the alleged crimes occurred in Portugal, the court in the German state of Lower Saxony took jurisdiction over the charges because B's last registered address in Germany was in the state.

(By Christian Brahmann, Maurice Dirker and Christina Sticht)