‘Police ending Maddie probe’
Parents hear Portugal news
Published:
POLICE in Portugal are ending their investigation into the disappearance of Madeleine McCann, it was reported today.
Portuguese media said the move came due to a lack of evidence.
The British girl went missing in the Algarve during a family holiday on May 3 last year, a few days before her fourth birthday.
Detectives later named her parents and a local man as formal suspects in the case, and a spokesman for the McCanns today said that this should now be lifted.
Two Portuguese newspapers reported today that police could reopen the case if new evidence emerged.
Portuguese authorities would only confirm they had concluded a report into the investigation but had come to no final decision.
A spokesman for Maddie’s parents, Kate, 40, and Gerry, 39, said they would “never give up searching for their daughter”, despite the reports.
The McCanns were said to be awaiting official confirmation of the Portuguese reports that detectives were to end the case.
The McCanns’ spokesman, Clarence Mitchell, called for their status as “arguidos”, or suspects, to be lifted but urged police not to leave the investigation files to “gather dust”.
He said: “I still haven’t got this officially yet.
“We are aware of reports in the Portuguese press today suggesting that the case is to be dropped or archived without charges to Kate and Gerry.
“The information in their files surely cannot sit on the shelf gathering dust.
“Kate and Gerry will never give up searching for their daughter.
“I’m not going to criticise the Portuguese police at this stage. We still have to work with them.”
He said that if the inquiry was to be discontinued, then police files should be handed over to the McCanns’ ongoing private investigation and that the search would continue.
Madeleine disappeared on May 3 last year.
The three-year-old had been on holiday in the Algarve resort of Praia da Luz with her parents, from Rothley, Leicestershire, when she vanished from the family’s apartment.
Mr Mitchell said: “If the reports are true, it is to be welcomed that no charges are to be brought and it is entirely right because Kate and Gerry are innocent of any involvement in their daughter’s disappearance and always have been.
“They have suffered for far too long in this process and the Portuguese authorities must now lift their arguido status.”
He continued: “The police themselves must continue looking for Madeleine.
“We are concerned that if they are to simply shelve the case then what will happen to all of the information in their files?
“They must be made available to our investigators, who are working extremely hard to find Madeleine.”
A Portuguese newspaper reported on its website that, according to a police office source, the report on the investigation was only descriptive of the facts which have been verified and those that have not been ascertained in the case.
This means it has not reached any conclusions and does not say whether it is a case of abduction, homicide, or concealing of a body, it was reported.
The final report is to go the Ministerio Publico in Portimao, where a decision will be taken in the coming days, the report says.
