SEARCH FOR MISSING MADELEINE McCANN RESUMES IN PORTUGAL
▶ British girl disappeared from an apartment while on holiday with her family in 2007
Police investigating the 2007 disappearance of Madeleine McCann yesterday began a search operation at a reservoir in Portugal.
About 30 officers gathered at the Arade dam, about 50km from Praia da Luz, where Madeleine was last seen alive. She was three years old.
Police searched the bank beside the dam with the help of a sniffer dog, while officers searched the water from a fire department boat.
Last night, police began digging near the reservoir.
German prosecutors declined to offer details about the search “for investigative reasons”.
The press and public were barred from approaching a blue tent at the site.
The search was requested by German police and was being carried out with the help of British officials in connection with a formal suspect.
German police are assisting the Portuguese authorities, German prosecutors said, while London’s Metropolitan Police said it had officers at the site to assist.
Convicted sex offender Christian Brueckner, 45, was in the Algarve in 2007. The German citizen has repeatedly denied any involvement in Madeleine’s disappearance.
German authorities said “criminal procedural measures are currently taking place in Portugal as part of the investigation” into the case. They said “the measures are being implemented by way of mutual legal assistance by the Portuguese prosecution authorities with the support of officers from the Federal Criminal Police Office”.
“More detailed information on the background is not being released at this time for
investigative tactical reasons,” prosecutors said.
Brueckner is serving a seven-year prison sentence in Germany for a rape he committed in Portugal in 2005.
He is under investigation on suspicion of murder in the McCann case, but has not been charged.
He spent many years in Portugal, including in Praia da Luz, around the time of Madeleine’s disappearance.
His yellow-and-white camper van was reported near the area where she went missing and he is said to have called the reservoir “his little paradise”.
Her disappearance stirred
worldwide interest for several years, with reports of sightings as far away as Australia.
There were also several books and TV documentaries about the case.
Rewards for finding Madeleine, who would now be 20, reached several million dollars.
British, Portuguese and German police are still piecing together what happened on the night she disappeared while on holiday in the southern Portuguese resort on May 3, 2007.
She was asleep in the same room as her brother and sister, twins who were two at the time, while her parents had dinner with friends at a restaurant.