Lawyers for the main suspect in the Madeleine McCann case have demanded the reopening of a rape case after new evidence emerged over a scar on his leg.

Christian Brueckner, 45, is currently serving a seven-year jail sentence in Germany over the brutal rape of a 72-year-old American woman in Praia da Luz in Portugal’s Algarve.

Now his legal team are claiming he was wrongly convicted in 2019 and should be freed from prison.

The Irish victim of a second rape – believed to have been carried out by the same man – said her attacker had a cross-shaped scar on his right thigh.

German-born Brueckner agreed to have his thighs examined by officials in June 2022.

The result, which reportedly said that Brueckner did not have this scar, was then given to his lawyer, Friedrich Fuelscher, 38, who now says it is proof that his client is not a rapist and should be freed.

An ‘operative case analysis’ allegedly showed that the two rapes were committed by the same person, so if Brueckner did not commit the second crime, he could not have committed the first one either, still according to Fuelscher.

The new twist is a chilling blow to supporters of the McCann team who had been following every step of the German authority’s two-year investigation into Brueckner’s links to Maddie’s disappearance.

They fear that if released, drifter Brueckner will simply disappear and may never face charges.

Brueckner is currently serving out his sentence on the rape charge at a maximum security prison in Oldenburg, Germany.

His lawyer is seeking to prove that if he did not rape the Irish victim, he is also innocent of the other rape he is in prison for.

But his lawyer Desuelscher tried to play down expectations that Brueckner could walk free.

Fuelscher added: “Only a vanishingly small proportion of applications for readmission are successful.

“One sees a superior power of the criminal justice system, which tries to ward off every attack on the old judgement tooth and claw.”

The disappearance of Madeleine McCann, who would have celebrated her eighteenth birthday last year, is still being investigated, while the Public Prosecutor’s Office is examining the possibility of filing charges in the Irish victim’s case, according to local media reports.