Portuguese police mugshots of Christian Brueckner from 1999 reveal officers knew about sordid past

The series of pictures were taken in the Algarve in July 1999 – eight years before the youngster was abducted from Praia da Luz

Mugshots of Madeleine McCann suspect Christian Brueckner dating back two decades prove Portuguese police knew about his sordid past but still dismissed him as a suspect.

The series of pictures were taken in the Algarve in July 1999 – eight years before the youngster was abducted from Praia da Luz.

Brueckner, then 22, was being extradited back to Germany to be sent to jail for sexually assaulting a six-year-old girl in a playground in 1994.

The drifter served a two-year sentence before he returned to Portugal – living in towns and villages close to Praia da Luz.

The pictures, buried in court documents held in the provincial town of Silves, provide further evidence of the incompetence of the initial police investigation into Madeleine’s disappearance from a holiday apartment in May 2007.

Brueckner’s name should have been added to a police list of know sex offenders living in the Algarve.

But it was not and Portuguese detectives never considered the German could be involved in Madeleine’s disappearance.

Brueckner (left and right in the 1999 mugshots), then 22, was being extradited back to Germany to be sent to jail for sexually assaulting a six-year-old girl in a playground in 1994

The drifter (pictured in the 1999 mugshots) served a two-year sentence before he returned to Portugal – living in towns and villages close to Praia da Luz

The drifter confessed to Portuguese authorities seven years later he was a sexual predator but this too was never recorded.

He told a Portuguese judge he had been in jail in Germany for sex crimes against children after he was arrested for stealing diesel in 2006.

Brueckner only became a suspect ten years later when he boasted to a friend in a bar in Hannover Germany while drinking that he was knew what had happened to Madeleine in Portugal.

Brueckner only became a suspect ten years later when he boasted to a friend in a bar in Hannover Germany while drinking that he was knew what had happened to Madeleine (pictured) in Portugal

The German Federal Police asked the PJ to investigate Brueckner and they discovered that the took a phone while he was in Praia da Luz just before the youngster vanished.

His former lover Nicole Fehlinger has been accused of acting as his accomplice to steal a family’s €100,000 life savings and could hold the key to solving the mystery of Madeleine’s disappearance.

But the mother-of-three has always maintained she hardly knew the serial sex offender.

The German Federal Police asked the PJ to investigate Brueckner (pictured in 2018) and they discovered that the took a phone while he was in Praia da Luz just before Madeleine vanished

Last month German police named Brueckner as their prime suspect in the kidnap and murder of three-year-old Madeleine, who vanished on May 3rd 2007 while on holiday in Praia da Luz with parents Kate and Gerry McCann.

Detectives in northern Germany have spent six weeks making desperate appeals for information to link Brueckner to the youngster’s abduction but have not so far secured the vital evidence they need.

Prosecutor Hans Christian Wolters, who is leading the investigation, has told the McCanns they have concrete evidence Madeleine is dead, in the biggest break-through in the 13-year-old case.

He said he hoped to be able to charge Brueckner within the next two months – but has added their investigation will not drag on forever.