Madeleine McCann suspect Christian Brueckner gave ‘underage girls drugs in exchange for sex’

Madeleine McCann suspect Christian Brueckner had sex with under age girls by paying them with drugs, a Portuguese witness has claimed.

The woman said that the German paedophile would sell drugs at rave parties held by teenagers – and if the young women could not pay he would have sex with them as payment.

She told a Portuguese TV station that the women were ‘minors’ and under the legal age of consent.

Although she did not know the man’s name at the time she said she recognised his photo from the subsequent publicity after Met Police officers issued an appeal for information.

Brueckner, now 43, who is serving a seven year jail term for the rape of a 72 year old American woman in Praia da Luz, is the prime suspect in the disappearance of Madeleine McCann 13 years ago.

The witness, who appeared on the TV station TVi24 with her face obscured, said she knew Brueckner was the man selling drugs as she also recognised the VW camper van that police seized last year and are using as part of their appeal for new information.

‘He gave the girls weed and other things they wanted and in exchange they gave him sex because they didn’t have money to pay for the drugs,’ she told the TV station.

An unnamed woman told a Portuguese TV station that the women Brueckner is claimed to have sold drugs to were ‘minors’ and under the legal age of consent

She said she recognised the VW camper van that police seized last year and are using as part of their appeal for new information

‘That was the way they did things.’

She said she remembers Brueckner from the parties held on a farm in Barao de Sao Joa, near to the town of Lagos where he occasionally worked at a bar.

Brueckner would have been 30 years old when he attended the parties around the time McCann went missing from her family’s holiday apartment in the coastal resort of Praia da Luz.

The witness said the German spoke ‘good English’ but had a reserved manner and was often accompanied by another man.

Brueckner, now 43, who is serving a seven year jail term for the rape of a 72 year old American woman in Praia da Luz, is the prime suspect in the disappearance of Madeleine McCann 13 years ago

‘He gave the girls weed and other things they wanted, and in exchange they gave him sex because they didn’t have money to pay for the drugs.

‘That was the way they did things.’

Revealing he always spoke English and hung around with a lookalike pal who she also thought was British, she added in the interview with Portuguese TV station TVI: ‘I thought the other man was a brother or a friend.

‘Both were tall and both were blond-haired.

‘One had blue eyes and the other had green eyes. I thought both of them were English until I found out now one of them was German.

‘I always assumed they were English because I always heard them speaking in English.

‘I immediately knew the new Madeleine McCann suspect was him when I saw the camper van on TV. It was the one he used. The last time I saw him was in 2007 shortly before Madeleine vanished.’

Police have said Brueckner was known to sell drugs to supplement his income from working in bars around Lagos.