A man who claims to have alerted police to Madeleine McCann suspect Christian Brueckner has spoken out for the first time.

Fresh searches were recently carried out at the request of German investigators who believe Brueckner, 45, kidnapped and murdered the youngster.

However, fresh searches yielded no new results.

More questions on the case have now been raised after the man who told German police about Brueckner has shared his story.

Helge Busching claims that, while the pair were drinking beers, Brueckner said ‘she didn’t scream’ in relation to Madeleine and her kidnapping.

The two men had the interaction at a music festival in 2008.

Mr Busching told German outlet Bild: ‘The topic [of Madeleine’s disappearance] came up and I said: ”Anyway, I don’t understand how the little one could have disappeared without a trace.”

‘Christian had drunk two or three beers, and he said: ”She didn’t scream.”

‘I thought: He knows that. He has something to do with it. But he also checked that I understood that and then left at night. 

‘At 3 or 4 o’clock in the morning he left a packed festival with his mobile home. I looked for him the next morning, but his neighbours said he had left.’

Brueckner is currently in prison for raping a 72-year-old woman in the same area of the Algarve region from where Madeleine went missing, but he has not been charged with any crime related to the disappearance.

Mr Busching also claimed that he tried to inform Scotland Yard about Brueckner in 2008 – via a dedicated hotline for Madeleine McCann tips – but never heard back.

He told Bild: ‘I called Scotland Yard back in 2008. At the Maddie hotline. I said I knew someone who might have something to do with it and gave them the name. But nothing happened there. Nothing! I was never called back.

‘In 2017 I had just served a prison sentence in Greece. When I heard about the 10th anniversary of the disappearance, I remembered. Apparently the call didn’t help at all. So I contacted Scotland Yard again.

‘Then they listened to me.’

The two men had gone back several years after meeting in Portugal.

Mr Busching told Bild he had previously stolen video tapes and a gun from Brueckner’s home several years ago.

One video showed distressing clips of the 45-year-old sexually assaulting an elderly woman and a teenage girl in Portugal.

‘That’s when I knew what kind of guy Brueckner was’, Mr Busching added.

He claims to have taken the videos to police in Germany, where he alleges he was told ‘keep your hands off it.’

Maddie was just three-years-old when she vanished from her holiday apartment in Praia da Luz in 2007.

German police are confident that Brueckner, who was named as the prime suspect in Maddie’s disappearance in 2020, is responsible for her disappearance.

He was charged with three offences of aggravated rape and two offences of the sexual abuse of children, in alleged crimes spanning 17 years between 2000 and 2017.

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