Madeleine McCann suspects Christian Brueckner’s trial was suspended after judge ‘tweeted that Jair Bolsonaro should be killed’

The sexual assault trial of the main suspect in the Madeleine McCann case has been suspended after one of the judges allegedly called for Jair Bolsonaro to be killed in a tweet.

Christian Brückner was due to appear on Friday before the Braunschweig regional court in northern Germany for several sexual offenses that he is said to have committed in Portugal between 2000 and 2017 and that have nothing to do with the disappearance of the British girl.

The convicted rapist, who is mentioned by name in the media but is known in Germany as “Christ B” because of strict data protection laws, is accused of three counts of rape and two counts of child sexual abuse.

As the German news agency DPA reported, the start of the trial was delayed due to long queues in front of the courthouse. Then the trial was adjourned shortly after it opened after the defense cited social media posts that suggested a lay judge might be biased.

The court postponed the trial for a week to decide whether the lay judge should be removed over tweets in which she allegedly called for the killing of Brazil’s former president and an animal abuser.

Brueckner called the process “ridiculous” and mocking Online mail: “I hope (they) find answers to (their) questions soon.”

The 47-year-old German’s appearance at Friday’s trial was the first time he has been pictured in public since he was linked to the missing Madeleine in 2020. However, Brückner was not charged in her case.

He spent many years in Portugal, including in the resort of Praia da Luz, around the time that then three-year-old Madeleine disappeared from her bedroom during a family holiday in 2007. He denied any involvement in her disappearance.

He is currently serving a seven-year prison sentence in Germany for a rape he committed in Portugal in 2005.

In October 2022, the public prosecutor filed charges in the proceedings, which have since been discontinued. Defense attorney Friedrich Fulscher said the defense would seek an acquittal of the suspect on all charges.

Speaking outside court on Friday about the allegations that led to the adjournment, Mr Fulscher said: “A juror like that has no business taking part in a fair criminal trial.”

German media reported that lawyers in a case involving the sexual abuse of multiple children also cited the lay judge’s work as a child psychologist as a potential source of bias.

According to prosecutors, the suspect tied up and raped an elderly woman in her holiday apartment in Portugal at an unspecified time between 2000 and 2006. He is accused of hitting the victim several times with the whip and recording the incident on video.

During the same period, he is said to have tied a German-speaking girl aged at least 14 to a wooden post in the living room of his apartment in Praia da Luz, allegedly beat her with a whip and forced her to perform oral sex.

The defendant is also accused of gaining access to the apartment of a then 20-year-old Irish woman in Praia da Rocha at night in 2004 before raping her, tying her to a table and whipping her.

In individual cases in 2007 and 2017, it is alleged that he exposed himself to girls aged 10 and 11.

The case is being heard in Braunschweig after a higher court ruled that the city’s judges had jurisdiction, overturning an earlier decision that they did not own. The focus of the verdict was the question of where the suspect had his last residence in Germany before he went abroad and then went to prison.

The court has scheduled 29 hearings until the end of June.