German Court: McCann Suspect Injured While in Custody

BERLIN (AP) — A suspect in the disappearance of Madeleine McCann, the British toddler who vanished from a Portuguese resort 13 years ago, suffered two broken ribs in an incident at a German court, authorities said Tuesday.

The incident occurred after Christian Brueckner, who is serving time on a drug conviction, was taken to Braunschweig state court on Monday for a routine hearing on that case.

Court spokeswoman Jessica Knab-Henrichs told The Associated Press that he was briefly treated in a hospital for two broken ribs, and was then returned to the court where the hearing was carried out.

The incident is under investigation and further details on what happened at the court were expected to be released later in the day, she said.

Although Brueckner is a suspect in the McCann case, prosecutors have said they do not yet have enough evidence to hold him on the McCann case alone.

In addition to the drug trafficking sentence, which Brueckner will have finished serving in January, he was convicted in 2019 of the 2005 rape of a 72-year-old American woman in Portugal and sentenced to another seven years. That conviction is under appeal.

McCann was 3 at the time of her 2007 disappearance from an apartment while her family vacationed in the seaside town of Praia da Luz in Portugal’s Algarve region.

German authorities in June said they had identified the 43-year-old German citizen as a suspect in the case and were investigating him on suspicion of murder.