POLICE last night warned “the clock is ticking” as they race to stop Madeleine McCann prime suspect Christian Brueckner going back on the streets.
The convicted paedophile, 47, was sensationally cleared of a string of unrelated rape claims by a German court yesterday and will finish his current seven-year sentence on September 17 next year.
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Prosecutors launched an immediate appeal, claiming judges in Braunschweig were biased.
And investigators probing Madeleine’s 2007 disappearance from a Portuguese holiday apartment vowed to charge Brueckner before his release date after securing a number of secret witnesses.
Lead prosecutor Hans Christian Wolters told The Sun: “We hope we will get an appeal decision from the supreme court.
“But if that is not decided by next September we will try to get an arrest warrant for Maddie.
“That will be our only chance to keep him behind bars.
“I can’t say if we have enough right now, but it is a question we will answer next year because the investigation is still ongoing.
“The verdict today has no impact on the Maddie case. They are totally separate.”
He added: “We have witnesses no one knows about.
“I can’t say which witnesses we have, but we have more witnesses than the two or three from this current case.”
Until now a drifter and an ex-cell mate appeared to be the only witnesses, both alleging Brueckner confessed to them.
Counting the days to freedom
Yesterday Brueckner, in jail for the rape of a US pensioner, was acquitted of three further counts of rape and two counts of indecent exposure.
The ruling left him counting the days to freedom, despite a psychiatrist rating him as “top league of dangerousness”.
Explaining the appeal, prosecutor Wolters told The Sun: “The supreme court have the power to order a retrial with new judges.
“We believe we have enough evidence Christian Brueckner is guilty and we believe the court will see the judges here have misinterpreted the evidence.”
We have witnesses no one knows about. I can’t say which witnesses we have, but we have more witnesses than the two or three from this current case
Lead prosecutor Hans Christian Wolters
Mr Wolters went on: “We believe one of the judges had made their minds up before the case even started.
“As soon as we had an indication of this we applied for that judge to be removed, but the request was declined.
“We think there is a case to show bias among the judges and we believe we can show that.”
During the trial Brueckner was accused of breaking into a flat in Portugal.
An Irish woman, then aged 20, said she was raped by a masked man — and identified Brueckner by his “piercing eyes”.
We think there is a case to show bias among the judges and we believe we can show that
Lead prosecutor Hans Christian Wolters
He was cleared of that, and separately of raping a girl of 14 and an elderly British woman.
He was also cleared of grabbing a child and performing a sex act on himself, near Praia da Luz weeks before Madeleine was abducted there aged three.
Brueckner has never been formally accused over her disappearance.
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