A police officer has paid a fine which is said to have brought forward the release date of the main suspect in Madeleine McCann's disappearance - meaning he could walk free in weeks.
Investigators suspect Christian Brueckner, 48, played a part in young Maddie vanishing from her family's holiday apartment in Praia da Luz, Portugal, in May 2007.
The German national is currently serving a seven-year jail sentence in his native country for the 2005 rape of an American woman, then 72, in the same Algarve resort.
Police had initially hoped to keep Brueckner behind bars due to an outstanding €1,446 fine, for charges of assault and forgery of documents, from a previous conviction in 2015.
If he were unable to pay it, he would have been forced to serve another 56 days of 'alternative imprisonment', an extension that investigators believed might buy them more time to bring fresh charges in Madeleine's case.
