MADELEINE MCCANN
Disappeared: May 3, 2007, from a holiday apartment at a resort in Praia da Luz, Portugal.
What happened?
The three-year-old from England vanished while her parents were dining with friends at a nearby tapas restaurant.
Where was Christian Brückner?
He was living in a camper van in Praia da Luz at the time of Madeleine’s disappearance and his mobile phone records link him to the area the night she went missing.
He received a phone call at 7.30pm which ended at 8pm. Madeleine is believed to have disappeared between 9.10pm and 10pm.
Brückner moved back to Germany shortly afterwards.
The tapas restaurant where Kate and Gerry McCann were on the night of Madeleine’s disappearance was just 50 metres away from where their children were sleeping.
A spokesman for Madeleine’s parents said they believed the identification of the German suspect was “the most significant development in 13 years”.
Clarence Mitchell, spokesman for the couple, said they have never given up hope that she is still alive as “they simply want to know what happened” to her.
German public prosecutors said they believed Madeleine was dead and police were treating her disappearance as a murder investigation.
Status of the case:
Madeleine’s disappearance sparked a police hunt across much of Europe, with millions of pounds being spent on investigations into what happened to her.
More than £11million has been spent on the Met Police inquiry, known as Operation Grange, since it began in 2011.
The Met Police said the case remained a “missing persons” investigation in the UK.