Helge Büsching, 52, committed crimes with the convicted rapist in Portugal in the early 2000s, then came forward in 2020 to claim drifter Brueckner had taken Madeleine.
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The prime suspect’s ex pal Büsching is expected to tell the court how Brueckner, 47, bragged “no, she didn’t scream” when they discussed Madeleine in 2008.
The alleged conversation took place just a year after the then three-year-old vanished from a holiday apartment in the resort of Praia da Luz.
Büsching said that Brueckner then “….suddenly gave me a look as he had realised he had revealed that he was involved in the youngster’s disappearance.
“And then next day, without saying a word, he had upped and left.”
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Büsching has a conviction for human trafficking, and was arrested in Greece in 2017 after attempting to smuggle migrants between Greece and Italy.
He said that when he first attempt to alert German authorities to Brueckner’s actions, he sought advice from a police officer and lawyer who both told him to drop it as he could end up implicating himself.
He also claimed he had phoned the Met Police to inform them about Brueckner’s confession in 2008, but no one called him back.
He said he tried again in 2017, after hearing about the tenth anniversary of Madeleine’s abduction.
This time, he said, he was interviewed by British police.
He was then summoned two years later to testify in a German trial where Brueckner was convicted of raping a 72-year-old American tourist, Dianne Menkes, in Portugal.
He was sentenced to seven years for the 2005 rape.
In 2020, Büsching was tracked by UK media to Corsica, where he had been working at a recycling plant and was living in a hotel.
He said he was only prepared to give one word “guilty” when asked about Brueckner and the likelihood of him being involved in the Madeleine case.
Büsching claims Brueckner’s lawyer, Friedrich Fulscher, used a string of dirty tactics via a researcher to con his way onto someone else’s Facebook account in order to track him.
Brueckner is facing a string of vile rape, sexual abuse of children and indecent exposure allegations at Braunschweig Regional Court in Germany – which he denies.
Last week, German authorities revealed that a van once driven by Brueckner was being probed thanks to The Sun.
They will examine the white Mercedes Sprinter motor that we revealed was parked at paedo Christian Brueckner’s lair after Madeleine vanished in 2007.
Germany’s federal police, the BKA, want to examine the motor amid hopes it could still contain DNA or crucial clues.
The Sun revealed the existence of the van in February.
A BKA source said: “We are on to this now and appreciate the tip,” adding they were speaking to the garage where the van is being stored.
The van bombshell also followed claims that Brueckner boasted about kidnapping and sexually assaulting another girl months earlier.
Prison cellmate Michael Tatschl, 49, will tell the court this week that Brueckner had held a 13-year-old girl hostage for four days after she ran away from a youth camp.
Tatschl, an Austrian, lived with him at a farmhouse in Praia da Luz – the same Algarve resort where Madeleine disappeared – and spent eight months in jail with him in Portugal for stealing diesel from lorries.
Both were released in December 2006 — just five months before Madeleine vanished.
The trail, which began in February, is expected to last for up to four months.
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