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Brueckner has been free since being released from jail in Germany last September(Image: POOL/AFP via Getty Images)

Madeleine McCann prime suspect Christian Brueckner has hit back at Metropolitan Police detectives who want to extradite him to Britain, warning them: “I have good lawyers”.

One of Scotland Yard’s most senior officers is reportedly leading a push to charge the German suspect before the 20th anniversary of Madeleine’s disappearance next year and would like to see the 49-year-old stand trial in London. Contacted by the Mirror on Tuesday morning, Brueckner said he was aware of the reports and admitted he does not know what will happen next. When asked how he’s feeling, he replied: “No comment… I have good lawyers”.

Asked about the reports, German prosecutor Hans Wolters, who is the public face of the German case and was the man who sensationally named Brueckner in connection with Madeleine’s disappearance six years ago next month, today said: “I suspect this is just hot air again. Extradition would require an arrest warrant. But there certainly isn’t one.

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Madeleine, then aged three, disappeared during a family holiday to Praia da Luz, Portugal, in May 2007(Image: METROPOLITAN POLICE/AFP via Gett)

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“Like all countries, Germany only extradites individuals if there is an arrest warrant against them. And I actually think it’s out of the question that there is an arrest warrant against CB in the Maddie case”. He added: “I am not in a position to say whether the British police can obtain an arrest warrant from a British court.”

Since Brexit, Germany and Britain have negotiated a reciprocal extradition agreement, governed by the EU–UK Trade and Cooperation Agreement, which came into force in 2021. But Article 16 of the German constitution prevents the extradition of its citizens to non-EU countries, which could see Berlin reject any request from the British authorities, causing a possible diplomatic and legal row.

According to the Daily Telegraph, Met detectives have been building a file of evidence for the Crown Prosecution Service on suspected abduction and murder, with suggestions they can gather a strong enough case for the CPS to authorise charges.

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Brueckner was escorted away from a previous hide out in Neumunster, Germany, by police after angry locals discovered his address(Image: Phil Harris)

A Scotland Yard insider told the newspaper: “Next year marks 20 years since Madeleine McCann went missing. If the evidence is strong enough to extradite the prime suspect and try him here, that is what we would seek to do. Clearly, there are numerous hurdles, but our priority at the moment is to amass the strongest evidence we can against that prime suspect.”

The development comes just days after the 19th anniversary of Madeleine’s disappearance. At the weekend, her parents Kate and Gerry McCann released a new statement speaking of their need to find “some justice”. In a post to the official Find Madeleine Campaign Facebook page, they wrote: “19 years. The search goes on… to find our Madeleine, to achieve some justice, to make the world that bit safer.”

Brueckner is German prosecutors’ prime suspect in the disappearance of Madeleine, 3, in Praia da Luz, Portugal in May 2007. He was jailed for seven years for raping a US pensioner in the same Algarve resort where the youngster went missing before being released from jail last September.

He has been under 24-hour police surveillance since his release and has been accused of playing “a game of cat and mouse” with German police. At the end of April he moved areas for at least the fourth time since his release, leaving the city of Branschweig to move further north to the Schleswig-Holstein region.

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The fiend has been accused of “playing a cat and mouse game” with German cops(Image: Phil Harris)

According to reports, Brueckner has repeatedly tested police officers’ patience – especially when drinking alcohol. During one incident, he is said to have briefly managed to escape officers on a bicycle before dialling the German emergency number and asking them where his escort had gone.

The Mirror has also been told Brueckner, who is living on benefits and has to wear a monitoring tag for five years, boasted of being able to repeatedly sneak out of his bolthole under the cover of darkness without watching police spotting him.

The fiend had been living in a two-room flat in Braunschweig, close to a kiosk he previously owned before being named in connection with the infamous case in 2020. But he faced a furious backlash from his new neighbours, including a petition to drive him out.

After being let out of jail he initially registered himself as homeless in Neumünster and was given an apartment. But after residents discovered where he was staying and threats were made against him, police moved him north to the city of Kiel, where he spent months living in a tent in a forest. Authorities later provided him with a container in the area, but he only remained there for a few days before moving back to Branschweig.

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Madeleine’s parents Kate and Gerry remain hopeful they may one day be reunited with their missing daughter(Image: PA)

Met Police Commissioner Sir Mark Rowley confirmed last year that his force was looking into whether it would be possible to extradite Brueckner to the UK. At the time, he said: “One of the reasons we are involved is that murder is in many situations extraterritorial and potentially a murder of a British subject can in certain circumstances be charged in the UK. There’s lots of maybes, so at the moment we are taking stock with the Germans and Portuguese.”

According to reports, it is possible that both the British and German authorities could hand over their evidence to the Portuguese authorities, which, as an EU state, could extradite Brueckner there.

Nick Vamos, the former head of extradition at the CPS, said: “Germany participates in the streamlined EU-wide extradition arrangements with the UK that were agreed after Brexit. However, Germany is one of 10 EU countries that chose to impose a ‘nationality bar’ and refuses to extradite its own citizens.

“This is a constitutional bar under German law so cannot be lifted or waived however serious the offence or strong the evidence. Brueckner could still be extradited to the UK if he left Germany, or to Portugal if the authorities there chose to prosecute him. It would be open to the Met Police to share evidence with the Portuguese for this purpose.”

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The Ocean Club and apartments where Madeleine went missing in Praia da Luz(Image: Tim Merry/Staff Photographer)

Last year, Brueckner was tried in Braunschweig on three further rape charges and two counts of child abuse, but was acquitted. During that trial, a psychological expert described him as belonging to the “absolute top league of dangerous offenders.”

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The expert warned that if he were set free, his probability of committing another serious offence within two years could be between 30 and 50 per cent. The acquittal is not yet final. Prosecutors in