Portugal renews search for McCann

British girl has been missing since 2007, writes Michael Levenson

Police in Portugal said on Monday that they planned to resume the search for a British child who vanished in the country’s Algarve region in 2007, renewing international attention on the disappearance of Madeleine McCann.

In a statement, Portugal’s Judicial Police confirmed news media reports about the search, saying it would begin in the next few days. It said the search, which Portuguese police were coordinating, had been requested by German authorities and would be carried out in the presence of British officials.

It was unclear why German authorities requested the search, although they had previously said that they were investigating a German sex offender as a possible suspect.

Although the statement by Portuguese police did not mention Madeleine by name, and referred only to a British child who disappeared in the Algarve region in 2007, The Associated Press reported that the effort was aimed at finding Madeleine. She was 3 when she vanished on the night of May 3, 2007, while vacationing with her family in the seaside village of Praia da Luz.

A fire official told Reuters that police were preparing to search near a dam in the southern region of Algarve, about 48 kilometres from the resort where Madeleine disappeared. Reuters reported that the police had erected blue tents and were closing off roads leading to the dam and that 20 officers had been assigned to the search.

Madeleine’s parents, Kate and Gerry McCann, said they had left her and her siblings, 2-year-old twins, in the apartment where they were staying while they ate at a nearby restaurant.

Gerry McCann had returned to check on the children around 9pm, and found nothing amiss. But when his wife returned to check on them an hour later, at around 10pm, Madeleine was missing.

After the girl’s disappearance, Kate and Gerry McCann helped to galvanise an international search effort that included appeals for help from such British celebrities as David Beckham and JK Rowling, and promised millions in rewards for information leading to the arrest of her abductor.

In 2020, German authorities said they did not expect to find the girl alive after more than a decade.

At the time, German authorities said they were investigating a German sex offender, identified by German news media only as “Christian B”, on suspicion of murder in connection with Madeleine’s disappearance. He lived in and around the Algarve region sporadically from 1995 to 2007.

Portuguese authorities had considered Madeleine’s parents suspects, but they were formally cleared.