Portugal restarts Maddie probe

POLICE in Portugal have reopened their inquiry into the disappearance of Madeleine McCann, five years after they controversially shelved it.

The country’s attorney-general, Joana Marques Vidal, authorised the move yesterday after “highly significant” new evidence was identified by local detectives. She said “new elements of evidence” and new witnesses justified the decision.

Marques Vidal was not in the post when the first investigation was closed.

Madeleine’s parents Kate and Gerry, who were suspected of being responsible for Maddie’s disappearance during the first inquiry by Portuguese police, wel- comed the news.

“We are very pleased. We hope that this will finally lead to her being found and to the discovery of whoever is responsible for this crime,” they said.

The new investigation will work with Scotland Yard’s inquiry into Maddie’s disappearance, which was the subject of a major appeal on BBC1’s Crimewatch programme last week.

She was three when she disappeared from the McCanns’s holiday flat in Praia da Luz in the Algarve in May 2007.

Scotland Yard began a review of the case in May 2011, and opened a formal investigation in July after identifying dozens of potential suspects and scores of new lines of inquiry.

Portuguese police said yester- day their own review team had been working since March 2011 to reassess files from the original investigation and this process had uncovered new leads. A wellplaced source said they could be “highly significant”.

British investigators met senior Portuguese police in Lisbon late last week to be briefed on the new lines of inquiry.

Earlier this month Scotland Yard spoke of a possible breakthrough after it emerged officers were analysing data from the phone records of people who were in Praia da Luz when Madeleine vanished.

Officers said they had identified 41 “persons of interest”, including several British people who were in Portugal at the time. – Daily Mail