Madeleine McCann is suspicious of Christian Brueckner’s friends saying he is convinced Brueckner took the girl from Praia da Luz, Portugal.
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Christian Brueckner has previously boasted about breaking into the holiday home (Image: PA/AFP)

A man who once befriended Christian Bruckner said his “paedophile past” led him to believe Bruckner had kidnapped Madeleine McCann.

Bruckner, 45, is listed as the prime suspect in the June 2020 disappearance of the 3-year-old, but he denies any involvement in the case.

He is currently serving a seven-year sentence in Germany for raping a 72-year-old American woman in the same Portuguese resort town where Madeleine was kidnapped in 2005.

He has not yet been charged, and there are fears he will never be charged for running out of funds for this year’s investigation.

But now an old friend of Bruckner’s, The Christian Post, has told the Mirror that he wants to help with the investigation.

Mr Post met Brueckner in a bar in the Algarve in the early 2000s, and the two remained friends until they fell out in 2006.

The 54-year-old said he knew Bruckner was “on the brink” of crime after bragging about breaking into vacation rentals during a “night crawl”.

Madeleine McCann disappeared from her room in the Portuguese resort of Praia da Luz in May 2007 (Image: PA)

Christian Brueckner has twice been convicted of sexually abusing children (Image: )

But Post, who now lives in Cambodia, insists he knows nothing about Bruckner’s history of sex crimes.

He said: “Now I know about Bruckner’s pedophile past, his rapist past. I’m 100 per cent sure it was him.

“I think he found her by accident and took her away on a whim.

“If he saw a little girl sleeping alone in her apartment, he would take her away.”

In what Mr Post refers to as a “pedophile past”, Bruckner was twice extradited from Portugal to Germany for sex crimes against children.

He was convicted in 1999 of sexually abusing children, for which he served two years in juvenile detention.

In 2017, he was sentenced to 15 months in prison again after being convicted of child sexual abuse and possession of child pornography.

Mr Post said he knew nothing about it until it appeared in the media.

In fact, Mr Post testified against Bruckner during his 2019 trial for raping the pensioner.

Detectives investigating McCann’s kidnapping reportedly questioned him twice.

Mr Post regretted not telling police about Bruckner’s theft, but said he feared it had something to do with the McCann case.

“But now I’m ready to get back on the pitch and face him again,” he said.

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