A woman who claimed to be Madeleine McCann has been charged with four counts of stalking.
Julia Wandel, 23, also known as Julia Wandelt, was arrested when she arrived at Bristol Airport on Wednesday, February 19.
Officers from Leicestershire Police - the force leading the investigation - travelled to Bristol to make the arrests.
Wandel from Lubin, Poland, has been remanded in custody to appear at Leicestershire Magistrates’ Court on Friday.
Julia Wendell claimed she was missing toddler Madeleine McCannBBC/PATwo of the counts relate to alleged offences between May 2, last year and February 15 this year. Wandel has also been charged with a further count of stalking between January 3 and April 21, last year.
A fourth count relates to alleged offences between November 27 and December 29 last year. A 60-year-old woman from Wales, who was also arrested on suspicion of stalking, has been released on bail, the force added.
McCann disappeared from her bed in a holiday apartment in Praia da Luz, Lagos, Portugal on May 3, 2007.
Last year, a court in Germany acquitted Christian Brueckner, who was identified as the only suspect in the unsolved disappearance of McCann, on a number of unrelated sexual offence charges. Brueckner will remain in a German prison for at least another year due to a previous conviction in another rape case.
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Madeleine McCann was last seen in 2007 in PortugalPAHans Christian Wolters, one of the German prosecutors on the case, told reporters after the hearing: “The investigation into MadeleineMcCann’s case continues despite today’s decision. This plays no role in the McCann case.”
Brueckner has not been charged in the McCann case, in which he is under investigation on suspicion of murder. Prosecutors had argued for the German national to be handed a 15-year sentence for the sex offences and are expected to appeal against the decision.
Brueckner, 47, is already serving a seven-year prison term in Germany for raping a woman in 2005 in the part of Portugal’s Algarve region where three-year-old Madeleine went missing.
He had been on trial since February over the offences he was alleged to have committed in Portugal between 2000 and 2017. Defence lawyers said there was a lack of evidence, with witnesses who were not credible.
Friedrich Fulscher, defending Brueckner, told the court that “there was never a sufficient suspicion” against his client. He also suggested Brueckner might not have been charged if he had not been a suspect in the McCann case.
He spent many years in Portugal, including in the resort of Praia da Luz around the time of Madeleine’s disappearance in May 2007. He has denied any involvement in her disappearance.
Brueckner will remain in prison for another year to complete his seven-year sentence for the previous rape case.
