Madeleine McCann suspect Christian Brueckner is being investigated on suspicion of at least five other sex crimes, prosecutors have revealed.

Hans Christian Wolters, who last year named Brueckner as the prime suspect in Madeleine's disappearance, said detectives believe "there is a good basis" to suspect the German paedophile also carried out a sex assault on a girl aged 10.

The victim was grabbed by a naked man, who performed a sex act. This was six miles from where Maddie, three, vanished in Praia da Luz a month later in 2007 while on holiday with her parents Kate and Gerry.

Wolters said officers are also investigating Brueckner, 44, over the killing of 16-year-old Carola Titze in 1996 and the rape of Irish woman Hazel Behan in 2004.

He said his department had been called in by officers probing Brueckner on suspicion of the disappearance of “German Maddie” –
five-year-old Inga Gehricke – in 2015, as well as claims he carried out a sex act in front of children in a playground in Messines, 40 miles from Praia da Luz, in 2017.

Wolters speaks in a new book, My Search For ­Madeleine, by British journalist Jon Clarke.

Referring to the arrest in Messines, which led to Brueckner being ­extradited to Germany, he says: "We have now picked up the investigation and he is facing several years in prison."

Asked about the case of the 10-year-old German girl on an Algarve beach in 2007, he said: "We are investigating Christian B's possible involvement in this and there is a good basis for our suspicion."

On Hazel, 38, Wolters said: "We only have Christian B as the suspect."

And on Carola, he said: "A Belgian prosecutor had some concrete questions about Carola not long ago. They needed some information about Christian B and we gave it to them."

He declined to comment on other cases Brueckner has been linked to, including that of German boy Rene Hasse, six, who vanished from a beach in the Algarve in 1996.

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