After all the media hullabaloo, and news of renewed searches in the 13-year hunt for missing Madeleine McCann, German authorities appear to be admitting they may drop their inquiries into the latest suspect – jailed sex attacker/ pedophile/ drug trafficker/ convicted thief Christian Brückner – while UK papers report the nine-year Operation Grange probe run out of Scotland Yard is to get renewed Home Office funding “to keep it going until at least spring next year”.
Says the Mail: “A spokesman for the Home Office, which is on the verge of formally approving the Met Police’s fresh request for more money, said: ‘We do not foresee a problem and often grants, in special cases like this, are given retrospectively while work is still being undertaken.’
The missing child’s parents are described as ‘unlikely to be surprised’ if the case splashed over the world’s media last month by federal police in northern Germany is “dropped due to lack of evidence”. Although so much was trailed in the way of ‘we know this, and we know that’, the reality appears to be that none of it can be proved (click here).
A friend of the McCanns cited by the Mail Online admits if the case is dropped, it “would be a huge embarrassment to the German authorities”.
But the family at least can cling to the knowledge that efforts are still being made by police forces (even if these forces don’t seem to see eye-to-eye) and the Grange probe – which has already cost upwards of €12 million – is to be extended.
Today (Thursday), lawyers for 43-year-old Brückner are challenging the terms of his 2018 extradition from Italy to Germany in the European Court of Justice in Luxembourg.
Explain reports, if successful, this means he could be released from jail immediately.
