The prime suspect in the Madeleine McCann case will today demand to be freed from jail despite being convicted of raping a 72-year-old woman.
Christian Brueckner’s lawyers will appear before the European Court of Justice in Luxembourg.
They will insist that Brueckner’s seven-year sentence for attacking a US pensioner in Praia da Luz in 2005 be overturned.
His defence team are arguing that it was a breach of international law to put him on trial for rape.
They claim because this was not the crime he was extradited for from Portugal in June 2017 so he should be freed.
Judges will release their verdict in the coming weeks.
Last month, 43-year-old Brueckner was named as the prime suspect in the disappearance of three-year-old Maddie from Praia da Luz in 2007.
Mobile phone data showed he was in the Portuguese village at the time she vanished.
When he was held, German police used a European Arrest Warrant to extradite Brueckner back to Germany over child sex abuse images charges.
But his defence say it was a legal requirement to have the explicit consent of Portugal for Brueckner to be extradited for one crime and later tried for another.
Germany is treating the Madeleine case as a murder investigation.
Chief public prosecutor, Hans Christian Wolters, who is leading the investigation, said the outcome of the ECJ hearing could result in Brueckner’s rape conviction being quashed.
