The prime suspect in the Madeleine McCann case boasted he had abducted a young girl in Portugal, a German court has heard.
Christian B – whose surname cannot be published due to German privacy laws – is suspected by German investigators of having abducted and killed then-three-year-old Madeleine McCann from her parent’s holiday apartment in Portugalin 2007.
Christian B is currently on trial for a range of non-related sex offences committed in Portugal, including three rapes and two cases of exposing himself and masturbating in front of children.
Speaking at Braunschweig Regional Court on Tuesday, Romanian national Laurentiu Codin, 50, who shared a prison cell with Christian B in 2020, told a story which resembled the night when Madeleine disappeared.
“He told me that in Portugal, that he had stolen there… he was in a region of hotels where people are there, not sure how you say, rich people, where rich people live,” he said.
“And when he was in the area of the hotels where the rich people live, there was somewhere an open window, he told me this, and this was the reason he asked me whether fingerprints could be left when he went out of the window.
“He said he went into the flat because of money and said that he didn’t find any money, but found a kid, and took the child, and that two hours later, the place he was, it was then surrounded by police and dogs.
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“And he then went away, out of the area, I am just saying what he told me… and he took the child in Portugal in his car, and in the time when the police and dogs were there at the house, he drove away, and he was gone, he asked me if the DNA from a child can be found as evidence and I answered yes.”
In court, Codin also said Christian B had told him how he had used a van to have sex with young girls near Hanover.
The Romanian national said: “There was the talk of a girl… he said that he had a bus and that he had taken her with it, and the kids, he kept some of them, but not others, but he never said that he had killed them.
“He had sex with her… but he didn’t kill her… He had her, and had done her business with her.”
The judge then asked how old the girl was, to which he replied: “I don’t want to say anything wrong, but she was very small.
“And I told him that it was out of order – what he had done. With small, I mean young, nine, 10, 13, I don’t know.”
Codin went on to make several other claims, including that Christian B had sex with an elderly woman who he had hit and strangled, as this was his sexual preference.
He also said that Christian B had asked him whether a strand of hair was something that could be traced back to him and used as evidence, and that he had also said he needed a “large house” burning down.
Speaking outside of court, the defendant’s lawyer Philipp Marquart refuted the testimony and said: “All of these claims are completely new. All of them. He has never said anything like this before, and they all contradict each other.”
In court, Codin also claimed that Christian B had asked him how much it would cost to get a fraudulent passport so he could get back into Portugal, saying: “I can remember that he asked, that he needed a passport and also a driver’s licence.”
Presiding judge Ute Insa Engemann then asked: “And if I put it to you that in 2020, in your witness statement, there was talk about prices, a falsified one costs 1,500 euros and an original costing 2,500 euros, and he said he needed it for Portugal, to go to Portugal.”
“Yes, yes I remember. Yes, he said that,” Codin replied.
It has previously been reported that Codin is supposed to have heard that Christian B had boasted to him that he had committed rapes in Portugal and got away with it.
But in court, Codin refused to be drawn concerning the report, constantly repeating that he “did not want to incriminate” the defendant.
After being pushed on the matter, he said: “We had a few drinks and we walked but that is it” but refused to give any details.
He tried twice to say that he was not prepared to answer any questions. The judge reminded him he was under a legal obligation to do so.
In court, Christian B also watched as a video clip was displayed on two large screens at Braunschweig Regional Court, showing the scenes of the apartment in Portugal where Madeleine disappeared in 2007.
The footage included interviews with Kate and Gerry McCann, as they described their horror on realizing that Madeleine was no longer in her bed on the night of 3 May 2007.
It also featured a clip from Aktenzeichen XY, the German equivalent of the UK’s Crimewatch television show, where the German Federal Criminal Police (BKA) launched a public appeal for info on Christian B, showing photos of his house and the cars he drove.
The videos and photos were shown at the request of Christian B’s lawyer, Dr Friedrich Fulscher, who argued it was important to understand that the witnesses may have been egged on by such media reports to misinterpret the defendant’s behaviour as a sex offence.
The video was played straight after the court read out the testimony of the Portuguese girl who claimed that Christian B had been in a playground, pulled down his trousers and masturbated while calling out to her.
However, the prosecution objected to the video being shown in court and said that they could not see the relevance of it.
Codin’s testimony against Christian B comes as there are indications the defendant could be acquitted.
The presiding judge, Uta Inse Engemann, who the prosecution has already tried to have removed on the basis that she is allegedly biased in favour of the defence, has already stated that there is no longer “sufficient suspicion of guilt for all of the charges”.
An 18-month-old boy and his 10-year-old sister are among 25 people who were killed in a series of Israeli strikes on central parts of Gaza, hospital officials have said.
Sixteen people were initially reported to have been killed in two strikes on the central Nuseirat refugee camp on Thursday, but officials from the Al Aqsa hospital said bodies continued to be brought in.
The hospital said they had received 21 bodies from the strikes, including some transferred from the Awda hospital, where they had been taken the day before.
Strikes on a motorcycle in Zuwaida and on a house in Deir al Balah on Friday killed four more, hospital officials said, bringing the overall toll to 25.
Five children and seven women are among those who have been confirmed dead.
The mother of the 18-month-old boy is missing and his father was killed in an Israeli strike four months ago, the family has said.
The Palestinian news agency WAFA earlier reported that 57 people had died in the Israeli strikes.
The Israeli military did not comment on the specific strikes but said its troops had identified and eliminated “several armed terrorists” in central Gaza.
It also said its forces had eliminated “dozens of terrorists” in raids in northern Gaza’s Jabalia area – home to one of the territory’s refugee camps.
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It comes as the Israeli military said on Friday it killed senior Hamas official Izz al Din Kassab, describing him as one of the last high-ranking members, in an airstrike in Khan Younis.
The Israel Defence Forces (IDF) have over the past few weeks resumed intense operations in the north of Gaza, claiming they are seeking to stop Hamas, the militant group ruling Gaza, from regrouping.
Meanwhile, top UN officials said in a statement on Friday that the situation in northern Gaza is “apocalyptic” and the entire Palestinian population in the area is at “imminent risk of dying from disease, famine and violence”.
The overall number of people killed in Gaza in the 13-month war is more than 43,000, officials from the Hamas-run health ministry in the territory, who do not distinguish between civilians and combatants, reported this week.
It comes as at least 41 people were killed in Israeli strikes on Lebanon’s Baalbek region on Friday, the regional governor said.
The deaths were confirmed hours after Lebanon’s health ministry said 30 people had been killed in Israeli strikes on the country in the past 24 hours.
It is not clear if any of those killed in the Baalbek region were included in that figure.
In recent days, Israel has intensified its airstrikes on the northeast city of Baalbek and nearby villages, as well as different parts of southern Lebanon, prompting roughly 60,000 people to flee their homes, according to Hussein Haj Hassan, a Lebanese official representing the region.
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Israel has issued evacuation orders for people living in parts of Lebanon
Israel’s military said in a statement that attacks “in the area of Beirut” had targeted Hezbollah weapons manufacturing sites, command centres and other infrastructure.
Israeli planes also pounded Beirut’s southern suburb of Dahiyeh overnight, destroying dozens of buildings in several neighbourhoods, according to the Lebanese state news agency.
More than 2,800 people have been killed and 13,000 wounded since fighting between Israel and Hezbollah escalated after Hamas’s 7 October attack last year, Lebanon’s Health Ministry said.
Meanwhile, in northern Israel, seven people, including three Israelis and four Thai nationals, were killed by projectiles fired from Lebanon on Thursday, Israeli medics said.
North Korea says it will support Russia in its war with Ukraine “until the day of victory” – after the US warned thousands of Pyongyang’s troops are set to enter combat in the coming days.
North Korea’s foreign minister Choe Son Hui hailed Vladimir Putin’s “wise leadership” ahead of talks in Moscow on Friday, and insisted that Russia will “achieve a great victory”.
“We also assure that until the day of victory we will firmly stand alongside our Russian comrades,” she added.
US secretary of state Antony Blinken has said thousands of North Korean troops are stationed near Ukraine’s border and are set to enter combat in the coming days.
Mr Blinken said 10,000 soldiers have been deployed to Russia, with up to 8,000 in the Kursk border region, and indicated they would be used on the frontline.
He added that the troops have been trained by Russian forces in artillery, drones and “basic infantry operations, including trench clearing”.
In an interview with South Korean TV channel KBS, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy condemned the West’s response to the deployment as “nothing, it’s zero”.
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North Korean troops near Ukraine border, US says
Russia’s foreign minister Sergei Lavrov told reporters on Friday that he had “nothing to add to what has already been said” on the US claims, and thanked Ms Choe for North Korea’s support.
A mutual defence pact was agreed during their summit, meaning the countries will help each other if they are attacked.
Speaking in Moscow, Ms Choe accused the US and South Korea of plotting a nuclear strike against her country.
She provided no evidence to back her claim, but spoke of regular consultations between Washington and Seoul, at which she alleged such plotting took place.
More than 200 people have died in Spain after nearly a year’s worth of rain fell in a matter of hours.
On Friday, there were at least 205 confirmed deaths in Valencia, two in Castilla La Mancha, and one in Andalusia.
Local authorities issued warnings late on Tuesday, but many say this gave them next-to-no time to prepare for the conditions that had killed dozens by Wednesday.
Here we look at what caused the flooding – and why they could happen again.
How quickly did the floods hit?
Heavy rain had already begun in parts of southern Spain on Monday.
In contrast to areas like Malaga, where residents told Sky News it had been “chucking it down for two days”, the rain did not start in the worst-hit region of Valencia until around 7pm on Tuesday.
At 8pm, people in Valencia received smartphone alerts warning them not to leave their homes.
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But by then, many were already trapped in dangerous conditions, particularly in the south of the city where a major road had flooded, leaving drivers stuck in their cars.
By Wednesday morning, more than 50 people had been found dead.
The Chiva area of Valencia had been hit by 491 litres per square metre of rain in eight hours. Only around 65 l/m2 usually falls in the whole of October.
Storms spread west on Wednesday night and into Thursday, bringing deadly conditions to Andalusia and Castilla La Mancha as well.
What caused them?
Heavy rain is not uncommon across eastern Spain at this time of year.
It’s caused by a weather phenomenon called DANA – ‘depresion aislada en niveles altos’ in Spanish – which translates as ‘isolated low-pressure system at high levels’.
DANA occurs when:
1) Cold air from the north moves south;
2) Warm air then blows over the Mediterranean, rising quickly and forming heavy clouds;
3) The low pressure from the north gets blocked by the high pressure above the water, causing it to slow down or stop completely.
This creates storm-like conditions that cannot move anywhere else – so the rain falls over the same area for a sustained period of time.
What role did climate change play?
General flash floods and those caused by DANA specifically have struck Spain long before humans started warming the climate.
But climate change is making heavy rain worse, and therefore more dangerous.
That’s because hotter air is able to hold more moisture. So when it rains, it unleashes more water.
The current 1.3C increase in global temperatures since pre-industrial times means the air can carry about 9% more moisture.
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What caused the floods in Spain?
And higher sea surface temperatures in the Mediterranean are a “key driver” of strong storms, said Dr Marilena Oltmanns, research scientist at the National Oceanography Centre in Southampton.
The world is on track for 3.1C warming by the end of this century, which is expected to make rain heavier still, increasing the chances of flash flooding and giving areas little time to respond.
Imperial College London’s lead for its World Weather Attribution (WWA) group Dr Friederike Otto says there is “no doubt about it”.
“These explosive downpours were intensified by climate change,” she says.
Professor Mark Smith, an expert in water science and health at the University of Leeds, adds that hotter summers also dry out the soil in the ground, which means it absorbs less rain – and more of it flows into rivers and lakes – which flood quicker.
Will they keep happening?
A red weather warning is in place for the Huelva area of Andalusia until Friday afternoon.
Beyond the warning period, storms are set to continue across parts of Spain for several days.
In the longer term, Dr Marilena Oltmanns says: “Given the long-term warming trend, both in the sea surface temperatures in the Mediterranean region and the global air temperature, we expect the events like the currently observed one in Spain to become more frequent.”
Chiva and the surrounding worst-hit area also suffers from the unfortunate geography of being in a river catchment – where water feeds into the River Turia – and close to the mountains. And is not far from the sea.
That means water has little chance to absorb into the land and so builds up very quickly.
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This makes it all the more imperative that forecasts are accurate, authorities prepare accordingly, and residents respond quickly.
Professor Hannah Cloke, professor of Hydrology at the University of Reading, describes people dying in their cars and being swept away in the street as “entirely avoidable”.
“This suggests the system for alerting people to the dangers of floods in Valencia has failed,” she says.
“People need to understand that extreme weather warnings for floods are very different from regular weather reports. We need to consider flood warnings totally differently, more like fire alarms or earthquake sirens, and less like the way we browse daily weather forecasts on our phones or on the TV.”
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Residents: ‘No one came to rescue us’
Gareth Redmond-King, international analyst at the Energy & Climate Intelligence Unit (ECIU), says Spain’s tragedy should serve as a “wake-up call” to the UK.
“This is not about future events in a far-off place with a dramatically different climate from the UK. Spain is one of our nearest neighbours,” he warns.