POLICE investigating Madeleine McCann prime suspect over a rape case have suffered a blow after it emerged his DNA was not a match of that at the scene.
Christain B, 43, was identified as a suspect into Maddie’s disappearance in Praia da Luz, Portugal in 2007.
Two weeks ago, police revealed that they were looking into Christian B for the rape of Irish tour rep Hazel Behan back in 2004.
The 37-year-old was tied up and attacked in Praia da Rocha, just three years before Maddie was snatched.
After carrying out tests on the traces found at the scene of the attack, forensic police have said they do not match that of Christian B.
A source close to the case said: “There is no evidence at the moment that links B to this rape.
“Officers have looked hard but at the moment there is nothing concrete we can use.
”It was decided the case should be looked at because of the similarities with the American woman but at the moment we cannot pin it on him at all.”
In another blow to investigators, Ms Behan told police that the man who raped her had a “birthmark” on his upper right thigh but photographs taken by German police show no such mark exists.
German prosecutors decided to look into the case after Christian B was convicted last December of raping a 72-year-old American woman in her own home at Praia da Luz in 2005.
The American victim was beaten with a razor-sharp sword after the fiend broke into her villa during a 15-minute horror ordeal.
He also bound, gagged and tortured her during the sex attack and she told police: “I feared I was going to die.”
She told how she was tied up and filmed by her attacker – similar to what Ms Behan described.
Christian B escaped justice for 12 years before he was nailed by DNA evidence taken from a hair at the scene.
Ms Behan, who waived her anonymity to the Guardian, was gagged and raped in her apartment in 2004 but the culprit was never caught.
Hazel told the newspaper: “My mind was blown when I read how he had attacked a woman in 2005, both the tactics and the methods he used, the tools he had with him, how well he had planned it out.
“I puked, to be honest with you, reading about it took me right back to my experience.”
His lawyer Friedrich Fulscher has insisted that Christain B had nothing to do with the horrific sex attack or Maddie’s abduction and accused German police of ”chasing up a blind alley”.
HORRIFIC ORDEAL
According to Portuguese court documents, Hazel reported to local police that she had been raped in June 2004, when she was 20 years old.
She woke up to a man she did not know in her hotel room.
Hazel told police he was wearing black gloves and a hood and was standing next to her with a knife to her neck.
He raped her on a table and tied her up with rope, took photographs of her and cut her clothes with scissors.
Christian B is currently in a prison in Kiel serving a 21-month sentence for drug dealing but is now eligible for parole.
Last week the European Court of Justice threw out an appeal he made claiming his arrest in Italy in 2018 breached European Arrest Warrant protocols meaning he will have to serve at least two-thirds of the seven-year sentence he was given for the 2005 rape.
Maddie disappeared in 2007 from a holiday apartment in Praia da Luz and German prosecutors say they have mobile phone data placing him at the scene just before she vanished.
He also has convictions for child abuse and theft.
Police are said to be relying on information from key witnesses who have told them B admitted to being responsible for her abduction.
Prosecutor Hans Christian Wolters told HOAR: “I’m not allowed to comment on anything on this investigation.’
