Who is Christian B - the main suspect in the Madeleine McCann case?

Investigators are searching a reservoir in the Algarve allegedly frequented by the main suspect in the Madeleine McCann case.

The Portuguese authorities say they are carrying out the search on behalf of German police and in the presence of British officers.

Germany is where Christian B, the main suspect in Madeleine's disappearance, is from.

Police there said in 2020 they believe she is dead and he is likely responsible. He has always denied any involvement, despite an alleged confession.

Repeated sex offender who lived between Portugal and Germany

Christian B, now in his 40s, is a convicted sex offender and drug dealer currently serving a seven-year sentence in a German prison.

The offence - raping a 72-year-old woman inside her flat in 2005 - happened in Praia da Luz, the same town Madeleine McCann disappeared from two years later on 3 May 2007.

His last name has been withheld by police due to German privacy laws.

Before Madeleine vanished, police believe he was living between Portugal and his native Germany in a Volkswagen campervan, surviving by dealing drugs and burgling homes.

He also lived in a house in Praia da Luz for a time.

He was given a two-year prison sentence in Germany in 1994 for a sex attack on a six-year-old girl, moving to Portugal with his then girlfriend in 1995 following his release.

Soon after Madeleine's disappearance and the town becoming the focus of global media attention in 2007, he moved back to Germany.

Police insisted his phone located him in the area and he received a 30-minute call an hour before Madeleine's parents say she went missing.

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Back in Germany, he lived in the city of Braunschweig where he ran a kiosk between 2013 and 2016.

In 2016 he was sentenced to one year and three months for "abusing a child in the act of procuring himself and possessing child pornography".

By June 2017 he had been sent back to prison, this time on a 15-month sentence for sexually abusing a child.

That year he allegedly confessed to kidnapping Madeleine while sitting in a German bar watching coverage of the 10th anniversary of her disappearance.

The friend he spoke to came forward to German police.

In 2018 he was arrested in Milan on suspicion of raping the elderly woman in Portugal in 2005.

After he was named by German police in 2020, Portuguese police reopened an unsolved investigation into the rape of an Irish woman working as a holiday rep in the Algarve in 2004. Hazel Behan waived her right to anonymity to claim he could have been her attacker. No charges were brought.

Formal suspect

In April 2022 Portuguese authorities announced they were declaring someone an 'arguido' in the McCann case at the request of their German counterparts, who named Christian B in 2020.

Arguido status means you are formally under suspicion and gives you the right to silence and to a lawyer.

He was not arrested or formally charged.

But German prosecutor Hans Christian Wolters told Sky News at the time he was being made a suspect "only for formal reasons… to prevent a statute of limitations in Portugal".

The move allowed investigators to "keep their options open" beyond the 15-year limit Portugal has on probes into serious crimes.

Earlier that year in letters from prison Christian B told a German reporter it would have been "absurd" for him to have abducted the toddler - as it would have exposed his other crimes.

He spoke of trying to "never provoke police" by "not committing any crimes… certainly not abducting anyone".

In June last year he said he had an alibi - a woman he was having sex with his in his camper van - to prove he wasn't responsible.

Although he couldn't name her, German police are believed to have a photograph of her lying in the van from their investigation into a separate rape he committed.

He says he drove the woman, who was on holiday in the area with her parents, back to Faro airport the day after and they were stopped by police - before she was arrested at the airport for having an illegal pepper spray.

More charges

In October 2022, prosecutors charged Christian B with five offences - three of aggravated rape and two of child sex abuse between December 2000 and June 2011 in Portugal.

None of them related to Madeline McCann.

A possible rape trial was dropped in April after the court in Germany ruled it had no jurisdiction over the case.

The reservoir being searched this month is the Arade Dam - 31 miles from the McCanns' holiday apartment.

It was searched by private investigators in 2008 over claims Madeleine's body could be there, but is now forming part of the official investigation after "certain tip-offs", according to German prosecutor Christian Wolter.

Christian B is alleged to have referred to it as his "paradise", regularly visiting it with his drug dealer.