German court wants Madeleine McCann suspect arrested for other cases - media

BERLIN (Reuters) - A regional German court has issued an arrest warrant against a 45-year-old German man who is a suspect in the Madeleine McCann case for five separate cases involving children, German media reported on Monday.

The warrant from the Braunschweig Regional Court is for suspected sex crimes against other children and does not refer to the case of the British girl who disappeared in Portugal in 2007 at the age of three, Der Spiegel magazine said.

The arrest warrant is intended to ensure the man, already behind bars, is not released after serving his current sentence - provided the current criminal proceedings are still ongoing then, the Braunschweiger Zeitung newspaper reported.

The latest indictments concern crimes that prosecutors believe the German committed in Portugal between 2000 and 2017, the newspaper said.

The court could not be immediately reached for comment when contacted by Reuters.

Convicted child abuser and drug trader Christian Brueckner, who has been behind bars in Germany since 2019 for raping a woman in the same area of the Algarve region of Portugal from where Madeleine went missing, was formally identified by Portuguese prosecutors as an official suspect in the McCann case in April.

Brueckner, 45, has denied involvement in the disappearance of Madeleine from her bedroom during a family holiday.

(Writing by Paul Carrel, Editing by Miranda Murray and Alison Williams)