Maddie ‘stolen to order for couple’
Fears tot was taken to Africa by slave traders
A GIRL “identical” to Madeleine McCann was seen on a key trafficking route in Morocco, looking sad and asking the man with her: “Can we see Mummy soon?”
Investigators have told of fears that the missing child was smuggled into Africa by slave traders who “snatched her to order” for a wealthy family.
Gangs operating in lawless Mauritania, west Africa, regularly sell youngsters to rich Middle Eastern families or to be trafficked for sex.
Ex-Scotland Yard detective Colin Sutton said: “If someone wanted to get a three-year-old child into Africa it’s the obvious route. The infrastructure and contacts for people smuggling are clearly there.”
It is not known if police have looked at links to Mauritania, where slavery was only outlawed in 2007 – the year Madeleine, three, vanished in the Algarve.
But private detectives hired by the McCanns believe there are “strong reasons” to think she was taken to Morocco, a route into the country.
Their claims were based on sightings and the proximity of Praia da Luz, where she went missing on May 3, 2007, to the town of Lagos, where boats regularly depart for Africa.
It is also just a four-hour drive to the Spanish port of Tarifa, where ferries cross to the Moroccan port of Tangier.
Kidnappers could have smuggled Madeleine from Praia da Luz into north Africa in just five hours using the ferry.
Portuguese police failed to seal the border with Spain – an hour from the resort – in the hours after she vanished.
Checks on the Tarifa-Tangier ferry were virtually non-existent on a recent journey. No searches were carried out on vehicles boarding the boat.
An abductor could easily have hidden Madeleine in the back seat or boot of a car.
In Tangier, they could have taken her to a safe house or moved her to another African country.
Interpol detectives in Gibraltar received a tip-off in August 2007 that a man was seen carrying a child resembling Madeleine in Tangier. The informant said the girl seemed “unhappy, ill-tempered and did not speak” as the man tried to buy shoes for her. A traveller told Crimestoppers they saw a girl resembling Madeleine on the Tarifa-Tangier ferry in a Portuguese-registered car four days after she went missing. Two days later, a girl “identical” to Madeleine was seen with a man at a petrol station on a main road from the port in Marrakech. Tourist Mari Olli, who lives on the Costa del Sol with her British husband Ray Pollard, said the youngster she saw, who was wearing blue pyjamas, looked “sad” and asked: “Can we see Mummy soon?”
The petrol station’s footage was deleted before it could be checked.
On the same day, an unnamed British man also spotted a girl he believed was Madeleine outside a hotel in Marrakech.
Mari alerted Portuguese police and gave a statement to Scotland Yard detectives, who promised to call back – but claims they did not.
In desperation, she emailed police in Leicestershire, where Madeleine’s parents Kate and Gerry live. They were so concerned about links to Africa that they went to Morocco a month after she disappeared.
Portuguese police files made public in 2008 reveal British police passed on the email to their counterparts in Portugal.
But Mari claims she was never spoken to by Portuguese officers and believes they made no attempt to trace the girl.
Portuguese police in turn complained about lack of co-operation from Moroccan authorities.