Madeleine McCann police ‘search a new property in Hanover with sniffer dogs’ – a week after Portuguese cops said they were ‘shocked’ by lack of evidence against main suspect
- Police descended on the house near Hanover in an eight-hour operation today
- But the search by Madeleine investigators ended with no apparent breakthrough
- German police searched an allotment in July once used by Christian Brueckner
Madeleine McCann police were today searching a new property in Germany, months after digging up an allotment nearby.
Police and sniffer dogs descended on the house near Hanover, where suspect Christian Brueckner once lived, after receiving a tip-off from a member of the public.
Officers were on the scene from early on Wednesday morning, but the current residents of the house were found to be innocent citizens and the eight-hour search ended without any apparent breakthrough.
Authorities did not give any official explanation for the search, but local newspaper Neue Presse said it was linked to the Madeleine case.
Christian Brueckner (right) is prime suspect in the kidnap and murder of three-year-old Madeleine (left) in 2007 while she was on holiday in Praia da Luz
In July, German police searched a vegetable garden 12 miles away which was once occupied by Brueckner, digging up the allotment in a two-day operation.
The allotment was only a short drive away from an apartment block where Brueckner was registered while living in Hanover, and the ‘Havana Club’ bar which he is thought to have frequented is also nearby.
One gardener said in July that Brueckner had lived off-grid at the allotment in 2007 and talked about planning his return to southern Europe.
‘I remembered his face from the pictures in the news. And I remember his van and his dogs. I had completely forgotten about him up until then,’ said Wolfgang Kossack, 73.
German media says Brueckner received at least two criminal convictions from a Hanover court, one for forging documents in 2010 and another for theft in 2013.
He split his time between Germany and Portugal from 2013 to 2015, prosecutors in Hanover have said.
Police use rakes to search an allotment in Hanover this year where bags of evidence were taken away from a vegetable garden once occupied by Brueckner
Weeks after the allotment search, authorities indicated they had been looking for digital storage devices, but Brueckner’s lawyer accused them of ‘desperation’.
Since taking the lead in the case earlier this year, German police have struggled to explain what evidence they have about Madeleine’s disappearance.
Last week, a leaked memo revealed that Portuguese investigators were ‘shocked’ by the lack of concrete evidence after being briefed on the case against Brueckner.
Before that, there was confusion about whether German authorities had specific evidence that Madeleine was dead, as they initially implied they did.