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Concern over missing toddler

4rfv UK
08 May 2007

Portuguese police are continuing to search for a toddler from Leicester feared to have been abducted while on holiday.

Police have broadened their search to an area nine miles around the apartment in Praia da Luz in the Algarve where the three-year-old girl, Madeleine McCann, was last seen.

Her mother Kate made a statement to the press appealing for her daughter's safe return.

With her husband at her side she told reporters: "Please do not scare her. Please let us know where to find Madeleine or put her in a place of safety."

Mrs McCann said: "Madeleine is a beautiful, bright, funny and caring little girl. She is so special. Please, please, do not hurt her."

It is reported that the couple had returned to their room to check on their two-year-old twins Sean and Amelie and three-year-old daughter to discover the older girl was missing from the apartment. The outside shutter and window was open.

Police said that they believed Madeleine had been abducted and are investigating reports that a man was seen with a small child in the area.

[Admin]

Mother prays for girl's safe return
Kate McCann weeps for her three-year-old daughter Madeleine

The Press Association
07 May 2007

Accompanied by husband Gerry and relatives who have flown out from the UK Mrs McCann attended mass with the local community to pray for Madeleine's safe return three days after her disappearance.

The three-year-old went missing from the family's holiday apartment where she was sleeping with her younger brother and sister, twins Amelie and Sean, while their parents just yards away.

Portuguese police have said that they believe she was snatched but offered hope saying they think she is still alive. With police stopping cars on nearby roads, search teams scouring the surrounding countryside and airports across the country on alert, officers say they believe she is still in Portugal.

In a public display of unity, the family attended the church of Nossa Senora Da Luz, on the day the congregation were marking mother's day.

After the service Mrs McCann stood to address reporters, breaking down with emotion.

She said: "Gerry and I would just like to express our sincere gratitude and thanks to everybody but particularly the local community here who have offered so much support. We couldn't have asked for more. Please continue to pray for Madeleine."

Her husband told how the family still had hope.

"From today's service the thing that we are going to take away is strength and courage and hope and we continue to hope for the best outcome from this for us and for Madeleine."

[Admin]

PLEASE, PLEASE DO NOT HURT HER. PLEASE DO NOT SCARE HER

By David Pilditch and Matt Drake in Praia da Luz
Sunday Express
May 8,2007

The mother of Madeleine McCann yesterday made an emotional appeal to her daughter’s kidnapper, begging: “Please, please do not hurt her.”

Clutching a photograph of her “beautiful little girl” Kate McCann, 38, pleaded with the abductor to set three-year-old Maddy free.

Mrs McCann, a GP, set aside her heartache and addressed the camera directly in the hope the abductor will be persuaded to return her daughter unharmed.

Mrs McCann and her husband Gerry made the appeal four days after Maddy was taken from the family’s luxury apartment in the Algarve resort of Praia da Luz.

The family issued a detailed description of the outfit Maddy was wearing the night she vanished.

She was dressed in white pyjama bottoms with a small floral design and a short-sleeved pink top with a picture of Eeyore from Winnie the Pooh. The word Eeyore was also written on the top in capital letters.

Yesterday it emerged that police in Portugal, who have been criticised for their handling of the investigation, have suggested a British man may have dragged Maddy away in a “well-planned” abduction.

Mrs McCann, who was holding the little girl’s favourite soft toy, as she has done throughout her ordeal, said: “Madeleine is a beautiful, bright, funny and caring little girl.

“She is so special. Please, please do not hurt her. Please don’t scare her. Please tell us where to find her or put her in a place of safety and let somebody know where she is.

“We beg you to let Madeleine come home.”

Mrs McCann battled to remain composed as she made the appeal from the apartment the family moved into after the abduction on Thursday night. Her consultant cardiologist husband put a comforting arm around her as she spoke.

Earlier the couple walked out alone hand-in-hand after setting off to pick up their two-year-old twins, Sean and Amelie, who were being looked after at a creche close to the tapas bar where the couple were dining when Maddy was taken.

Mrs McCann said: “Sean and Amelie need Madeleine and Madeleine needs us. Please give our little girl back.”

[Admin]

Hopes dashed after 'sighting' in Madeleine hunt

Sam Knight and agencies
Times Online
May 8, 2007

Hopes were raised and then dashed this evening of a breakthrough in the hunt for missing British three-year-old girl, Madeleine McCann.

Portuguese police set up roadblocks after a man was seen with a blond child matching Madeleine's description hundreds of miles from the coastal village where she disappeared last Thursday night.

The development was reported by Portuguese television just hours after extra police and specialist detectives were drafted in to help the search for Madeleine, who has not been seen since her parents came to check on her while they ate dinner at a holiday resort in the Algarve.

Officers set up roadblocks near the town of Nelas, around 300 miles north of the village of Praia de Luz, after witnesses said they saw a man driving away with a blond girl answering the girl's description. The report said that a man was seen in a supermarket with a girl who did not want to be with him.

But as news of the apparent breakthrough began to spread, a spokesman for the Portuguese police said that the sighting had been a false alarm.

Chief Inspector Olegario Sousa of the Portuguese National Crime Squad, who is leading the investigation, then confirmed that the sighting had been erroneous at a news conference this evening.

Briefing journalists at Portimao Town Hall, Mr Sousa said that 15 square kilometres surrounding the Praia de Luz resort had now been searched, along with 500 apartments and 350 possible leads. He said that several hundred people had been contacted and 100 formally interviewed.

"All the necessary means and resources are being used to resolve the investigation," he said.

Earlier today investigators, led by specialist officers from the sex abuse and homicide unit in Lisbon, broadened the search area to 25 miles around the village of Praia de Luz, where Madeleine was last seen shortly before 10pm last Thursday at a British-run Mark Warner resort.

As they awaited news, the rest of the McCann family in Portugal held a simultaneous vigil today with hundreds of friends and relatives who gathered at Leicester’s Glenfield Hospital, where Kate and Gerry McCann, the girl's parents, both work. The Manchester United winger and Portugal player, Cristiano Ronaldo also appealed for help in the search.

"I was very upset to hear of the abduction of Madeleine McCann and I appeal to anyone with information to come forward, please come forward," he told Sky News.

Since Madeleine's disappearance there has been speculation in both the British and Portuguese press that she could have been abducted by an international adoption or paedophile ring with possible British connections.

The investigation has also been dogged by intense media coverage and a lack of familiarity with Portuguese police procedures, which insist on greater secrecy in such investigations.

Portuguese police, for instance, have said that they have a description of a man they are looking for, but cannot share it because of legal restrictions.

Today there were reports that the description was of a British man, aged between 35 and 40, with dark, slicked-back hair who was wearing beige or white trousers and a blue jacket the night Madeleine disappeared.

The Portuguese daily newspaper, Publico, said the man had been seen earlier in the week in Sagres, taking pictures of children.

Asked about the description this evening, Mr Sousa said he could not discuss the Portuguese reports for fear of breaking the law.

"Some details of the investigation cannot be brought to the public because of the law," Mr Sousa told a frustrated group of British journalists. "Things are not equal in the legal system in Portugal and in the UK. It's not your fault and it's not my fault."

Portuguese police are known to be collaborating with British officers as they try and identify likely suspects and today Leicestershire police said they had received calls from all over the country about the girl's disappearance. They would not say how many calls came from Britons on holiday in Portugal's popular coastal resorts.

"We have received a number of calls from members of the public and police forces around the country, with information relating to the disappearance of Madeleine McCann," said a spokesman. "We are collating this information and actioning it as appropriate. All information is then being passed to the Portuguese police."

"It would be inappropriate to comment in any detail as the investigation does not fall within our jurisdiction and remains in the hands of the Portuguese police."

Earlier, a British tourist said she had been spurred to report seeing a man trying to steal a pushchair while she was on holiday in the Algarve last week after learning of Madeleine's disappearance. "It was late at night," said Amanda Mills, 34, of Basildon, Essex. "This guy came along and put his hands on a pushchair outside somebody’s apartment. He didn’t even look to see if there was a child in it."

She said the man ran off when she shouted at him.

[Admin]

Madeleine 'abducted to order by an international child sex gang'

Thomas Catand Stewart Tendler
The Times Online
May 10, 2007

Portuguese police are now working on the assumption that Madeleine McCann was abducted “to order” by an international paedophile network.

Detectives have discarded a range of other possibilities, including the theory that the three-year-old British girl could have walked out of her Algarve hotel room by herself or was kidnapped for adoption, Portuguese newspapers have reported.

“Everything points to a kidnapping,” a person close to the week-old investigation told the newspaper Correio da Manhã, adding that police were now investigating exclusively the possibility that she had been captured by a child-abuse network. Police sources quoted anonymously by other local newspapers said much the same. British officers specialising in child abduction cases have flown to the Algarve. One of them, Detective Superintendent Graham Hill, is a veteran of missing child investigations and was one of the senior detectives in the hunt for 13-year-old Milly Dowler, whose body was found in September 2002 in the Hampshire countryside. No one has ever been charged with the murder.

Mr Hill, who has been working for the Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre, was also a senior investigator in the hunt for Antoni Imiela, the serial rapist jailed in 2004 for attacks, including five in Surrey. British detectives have also handed their Portuguese counterparts a list of people on Britain’s sex offenders register who have recently travelled to the country.

It would not be the first time that a child taken from Portugal has ended up in the grip of a paedophile ring.

In 1998, an 11-year-old boy, Rui Pedro Mendonça, vanished while walking home from school in Lousada, a town in northern Portugal.

Three years later, horrific images of Rui Pedro being sexually abused were uncovered during an international police operation that cracked a global paedophile network.

More than 200 paedophiles in 13 countries had exchanged more than 750,000 images of children through a private internet club called Wonderland.

Analysis showed that 1,236 children had been subjected to abuse that officers described as “unimaginable”.

Some were abused live, to order, online. Officers said that they had wept as they catalogued the pictures and that they had been haunted by them for years.

The Portuguese boy’s mother, Filomena Teixera, flew to Switzerland to view the pictures and was apparently able to identify her son. But he was never found. Investigators fear that he may have been killed to cover up the abuse.

“When I saw the news about the disappearance of the English girl, I was terrified,” Ms Teixera told the newspaper 24 Horas. “I immediately thought of my son, even though the cases are different. And I thought of Madeleine’s parents, the anguish they are suffering.”

Ms Teixera said that she had had psychiatric treatment for eight hours a day for the past four years, since her father died. She still refuses to believe that her son, who would now be 20, could have died.

“When I stop believing he is alive, I lose all my strength,” she said. “My brain doesn’t allow me to think he is dead.”

Child protection campaigners have alleged that a culture of corruption and complacency in Portugal allows such kidnappings to continue. The founder of the Swiss-based group Innocence in Danger has said that she had tried to set up an office in Portugal but gave up because of the reluctance of the authorities. Homayra Sellier said after Madeleine’s disappearance that Portugal was a country in which “the corruption has gone so high that there’s nothing we can do”.

“The fact that the girl [Madeleine] was kidnapped from her bed shows how bad things are,” she said.

[Admin]

THE CCTV SUSPECTS ..TWO BRIT MEN AND A BLONDE WOMAN

Vanessa Allen and Martin Fricker in Praia Da Luz 1
The Mirror
1/05/2007

Missing Madeleine McCann could have been snatched by two men and a woman in a British car, police believe.

The three suspects were caught on CCTV at a petrol station near Praia da Luz, where the tot vanished last Thursday - raising fears she was kidnapped to order by a gang of perverts.

And a witness last night told detectives he was certain one of the trio was the same man who took photos of his daughter on a nearby beach three days earlier.

Descriptions of the gang and the car's details were flashed to police around Europe by Interpol.

The lead came as Madeleine's parents Gerry and Kate, both 38, released a new picture of their daughter in an Everton shirt.

A police source said: "This CCTV footage from the garage was fed into the investigation after a worker there expressed suspicions about the way the people were acting.

"We have a witness who claims he recognises those people from an alleged incident a few days earlier.

"The man took a picture of the suspect on his mobile phone, we are looking at that.

"Unfortunately, the lens was partially obscured by his finger, but it could prove useful." The Portuguese witness, who lives in Germany, told officers the suspect fled in a car with another man and a woman after the incident on Sagres beach, 16 miles from Praia da Luz.

Staff at the petrol station called police after a "foreign-looking" blonde in her 40s came in with a child matching Madeleine's description. Witnesses said she tried to make the girl say thank you in Portuguese, but she refused and looked uncomfortable.

The child was not visible on the footage, but the number plate was yellow and black - as in Britain.

Distraught Gerry and Kate, of Rothley, Leics, were taken to police HQ in Portimao and told of the development yesterday. But it is not thought the couple saw the footage.

Catholic Kate later attended an Anglican church vigil in Praia da Luz for Madeleine, who is four tomorrow. She looked gaunt and had to be supported by a friend throughout the emotional service.

Expat Denise Ryans, who left in tears, said: "She was in despair."

Last night Madeleine's grandparents Susan and Brian Healy and 300 friends and relatives packed Our Lady of Compassion Catholic church in Formby, Merseyside, to pray for her. The CCTV footage was from a Galp petrol station on the A22 road out of Praia da Luz which heads east to Spain - two hours drive away. It could be the first positive lead for police hunting Madeleine. The film has been shown to residents in towns on routes from the resort.

Pharmacies have been asked if anyone has bought insect sprays that contain chloroform, which could be used to drug Madeleine.

Two couples, thought to be British and in their 50s, were also driven to police HQ to help detectives.

British police have passed a list of paedophiles to Portuguese officials and have identified two who live in the Algarve.

Crimestoppers has taken hundreds of calls from expats in Portugal and visitors regarding possible perverts in the region.

Leicestershire Police are dealing with the information and passing it on. A spokesman said: "Crimestoppers has passed to us information which they regarded as significant."

Portuguese police are also investigating a report from a witness who saw a blonde woman looking through Madeleine's window at the Mark Warner complex on the night she was taken from her bed while her parents ate in a restaurant nearby.

Other possible sightings include a woman who said she saw a car with three men parked outside the complex.

Police last night wound down the land search for Madeleine. Chief Inspector Olegario Sousa said a 125-mile area had been scoured at least twice.

He added: "The area that they covered until now - and all the places that have been checked - the results are zero."

He confirmed that neither Kate nor Gerry were suspects. After the picture of the youngster in an Everton shirt was released, team captain Phil Neville said: "Fans, along with everyone connected with the football club, are hoping and praying for Madeleine's safe return."

[Admin]

The search for Madeleine: a week of hope and heartbreak

Daily Mail
May 10, 2007

Within hours of Madeleine McCann going missing, her grinning face was peering out from television broadcasts across the country.

Her family and friends quickly knocked down suggestions by resort staff that the little girl could have wandered off, saying from the outset that she was snatched from her bed during an idyllic holiday in the Algarve village of Praia Da Luz.

Known by friends to be protective parents who idolised their children, 38-year-old doctors Gerry and Kate McCann, from Rothley, Leicestershire, had been eating at the Ocean Club's tapas restaurant on Thursday night just yards away.

They were checking on Madeleine and their two-year-old twins Sean and Amelie, every half hour.

At around 10pm, Kate McCann emerged screaming from the room having found the shutters pulled up and the window and door open, beginning what would be every parent's nightmare.

Staff and guests joined in the search, and the local police - the National Republican Guard - arrived within 10 minutes, launching a sniffer dog search and notifying border police, Spanish police and airports.

The Judicial Police - the Portuguese CID equivalent - arrived in force the next morning, sparking criticism from British talking heads in interviews that the "golden hour" opportunity to find Madeleine had been missed.

As the media descended on the seaside resort, questions about their handling of the case grew as it became apparent that they would not divulge any details about possible suspects or lines of inquiry.

In the UK, police would use the child rescue alert, established after the murder of Sarah Payne, asking television and radio to broadcast a description of the child, what they were last wearing and any details of a suspect or their vehicle.

In Portugal, the integrity of the investigation is tantamount and public appeals are considered to give criminals clues as to the direction police are taking.

As a result, it was Madeleine's parents who issued the first photographs and footage of their daughter, and they who made the first public appeal for information.

Later, they would be the ones to detail the clothes their daughter was wearing when she vanished: white pyjama bottoms with a small floral design and a short-sleeved pink top with a picture of Eeyore on it.

In one photograph released, taken while on holiday, Madeline wears a pink hat and grins up at the camera, clutching tennis balls to her chest. In another, she is cradled by her mother as she blows out birthday candles on a homemade cake. In another black and white shot, she sits surrounded by her mother, father, brother and sister: the picture of a perfect happy family.

Facing the cameras on Friday night, Madeleine's father and consultant cardiologist Gerry McCann, his voice cracking with emotion, issued a personal appeal to anyone holding his daughter captive to release her.

He said: "We can't describe the anguish and despair we are feeling as parents of our beautiful daughter Madeleine.

"Please, if you have Madeleine, let her come home to her mummy, daddy, brother and sister."

By this time police had begun dusting window shutters for finger prints and had sealed off the apartment, but again their methods drew criticism from British experts.

Sniffer dogs are thought to have followed Madeleine's scent to a supermarket 50 yards away but the trail went cold and the store's CCTV cameras showed no sign of the girl.

Using a map provided by the local mayor and aided by extra maps downloaded from the internet, around 800 people took part searching an area from the resort to the next village of Quatro Estradas around three miles away.

The search was extended to six miles, and television footage showed groups scouring the beach and the hillsides and derelict buildings around the village.

One of the search coordinators, local resident Dave Shelton, defended the police, saying: "The police were great. You have to remember that the population of Portugal is about the same as London. They have shipped them down from Lisbon, from everywhere."

The next morning, detectives broke their silence to confirm what everyone had dreaded but come to expect: that Madeleine had been abducted.

They also brought some hope however, saying they believed she was still alive and not far from Praia Da Luz.

Guilhermino Encarnacao, director of the Judicial Police in the Faro region, said calls had flooded in from all over Portugal with possible sightings, and made clear police were considering the possibility that she was abducted for sexual abuse.

Again, there was frustration that no details of a rumoured suspect were released, nor was a sketch of a suspect put together by experts - later said by people shown it to be featureless and look "like an egg with hair".
Speaking this morning on BBC Breakfast, Portuguese Ambassador to Britain Anton Santana Carlos acknowledged the release of e-fits could help trap a suspect, but added of the Portuguese police laws: "It's not a mirror wall that can be changed from one day to the other, this principle is enshrined in our constitution so we cannot change it easily."

As the search continued, tormenting reports of sightings filtered out.

Local expatriates spotted a young girl was spotted walking along a road in the nearby town with two people; a balding man was seen dragging a girl towards a marina in the nearby town of Lagos; another man was seen driving away from a central Portuguese village at speed; a tourist reported how, two weeks earlier, she saw a man trying to steal a pushchair at the resort itself.

With each, the watching world held its breath, only for another red herring to be confirmed.

Gerry McCann and his wife Kate, clutching Madeleine's pink cuddly toy kitten, emerged to make another statement. While careful to thank police for their efforts, they said they were glad to have Leicester Police family liaison officers helping them find out more, even though there was little more to know.

Mrs McCann made her first direct appeal to her daughter's captor, standing on the steps of a local church where she attended a Portuguese Mother's Day ceremony.

"Please continue to pray for Madeleine," she said, whispering afterwards: "She's lovely."

Later she appealed directly to whoever is holding her daughter. "Please, please, do not hurt her. Please do not scare her, please let us know where to find Madeleine or put her in place of safety and tell somebody where. We beg you to let Madeleine come home."

She added in Portuguese: "Por favor, devolva a nossa menina."

Police sources claimed detectives were now looking for a British, rather than Portuguese abductor, pointing to a working description detectives are using suggested someone of English appearance.

Local media suggested British authorities had provided details of British paedophiles with links to the Algarve.

Meanwhile police showed their frustration with the constant questions in another press conference in which they admitted they no longer knew if the Madeleine was alive or not.

Responding to another question, Chief Inspector Olegario Sousa said: "We are searching for the child until the moment she appears. We can say nothing more because we are not magicians."

By the end of the weekend, Interpol and Europol were involved and British offers of help were accepted. Two Cracker-style British criminal behavioural experts from the Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre (Ceop) - which tackles international child sex abuse - began work today.

Police, perhaps relenting to intense media interest, revealed they had received hundreds of calls from both Portuguese people and foreigners, interviewed more than 100 people, followed up 350 separate suspicious incidents, inspected 500 apartments in the holiday area and scoured fields across a nine-mile area.

Crimestoppers has set up a special number for information about Madeleine, which will be relayed to the Portuguese police by the Leicestershire force, and Ceop together with the Virtual Global Taskforce (VGT) launched a web appeal.



Football stars such as Cristiano Ronaldo and John Terry have appealed for Madeleine's return
Footballers Cristiano Ronaldo, John Terry and Paulo Ferreira added their voices to calls for Madeleine to be freed. Prime Minister Tony Blair's official spokesman confirmed he too was waiting anxiously for news.
An email address set up yesterday afternoon for the family by Ocean Club owners, holiday firm Mark Warner, received 400 messages by mid-morning today from 20 countries, including Zambia, the United States and Bahrain.

And Gerry and Kate McCann wait and pray, maintaining a brave face for their children and hoping their daughter will be found before she turns four on Saturday.

Their ordeal with either end with joy or the unthinkable - and clues as to which it will be prove frustratingly elusive.

• Messages for the McCanns can be sent to mccannfamily@markwarner.co.uk

• The Crimestoppers number for those calling from Portugal is 0044 1883 731 336 or information can be passed direct to the Portuguese police on 00 351 282 405 400.

• The Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre and Virtual Global Taskforce appeal is at www.ceop.gov.uk and www.virtualglobaltaskforce.com.

[Admin]

Pleas, anger in missing girl hunt

CNN International
May 12, 2007

LONDON, England (CNN) -- The anguished parents of Madeleine McCann, the British girl missing for more than a week after appparently being snatched from a Portuguese vacation resort, have made a fresh appeal for her return.

"Words cannot describe the anguish and despair that we are feeling," said Madeleine's father, Gerry McCann.

"Please, please, do not hurt her. Please do not scare her, please tell us where to find her," the girl's mother, Kate McCann, said in a video plea for the girl's release. (Watch mother plea for missing daughter's return)

Police say Madeleine, who turns four on Saturday, was abducted from her parent's resort apartment in Portugal's Algarve. The McCanns had left their daughter in bed as they dined nearby.

Amid fierce media criticism in the UK of Portuguese police efforts to find the toddler, Portugal's ambassador in London , Antonio Santana Carlos, released a statement Friday saying, "Trust the authorities. They're doing their best."

But British media filming roadblocks on Portugal's border with Spain caught police sitting in their cars and waving vehicles by during a recent rainshower.

"Clueless" was a front page headline in London's Daily Mirror newspaper earlier this week.

Andrew Forrester, from Wales, was helping search for Madeleine and found the effort of Portuguese police underwhelming.

"To be honest, it seems as though there is very little going on," he said. "I'm sure they are trying, but the police presence doesn't seem to be massive, which I thought that maybe it would be."

Portuguese police said they were following procedures and that they operated differently than their counterparts in the UK.

"Some details can't be brought to the public because of the law. I ask the British people to understand things are not equal between UK and Portugal legal systems," said Olegario Sousa, a chief inspector with the Portuguese police.

Armando Ferreira, president of the National Police Union, also defended the search.

"Portuguese police are making a great effort. I have colleagues volunteering during their days off to help," he said, according to a Reuters news service report.

"We're doing everything to find the child alive," Reuters quoted Portugal's President Anibal Cavaco Silva as saying.

British soccer star David Beckham weighed in on the case Friday, making a video plea for information that could lead to the girl's safe return to her parents. "Please, please help us," Beckham pleads as he holds up a missing person poster for Madeleine. (Full story | Video)

While the British press was critical of the police efforts, the girl's family spared police of any criticism concerning the search.

"They're not trying to do a bad job," Gerry McCann said. "They're working very hard, they're giving information when it's appropriate. Let's give them our support."

[Admin]

Beckham urges help in missing girl case

The Associated Press
May 11, 2007

Soccer star David Beckham made a televised appeal Friday for help in the search for a 3-year-old British girl who disappeared a week ago while on vacation with her family in southern Portugal.
In footage broadcast on Portuguese television, the Real Madrid soccer star held up a poster with a photo of Madeleine McCann.

"If you have seen this little girl please could you go to your local authorities or police and give any information that you have. Any genuine information you have - please, please help us," Beckham said.

Madeleine disappeared on May 3 from a hotel room where she and her family were staying in the Algarve coastal region, a major European holiday destination renowned for its warm climate and picturesque beaches. Police believe she was abducted while her parents ate dinner in a restaurant in the resort complex.

Two Portuguese soccer players - Manchester United's Cristiano Ronaldo and Chelsea's Paulo Ferreira - have also appealed for information on the missing child, speaking in English and Portuguese.

Madeleine's parents said Friday they were satisfied police were doing all they could to find their daughter as authorities wound down their search of the local countryside.

Gerry and Kate McCann spent most of Thursday at a local police station and said in a statement: "We have now seen at first hand how hard the police are working in the search for Madeleine and their strong desire to find her."

"We are very grateful for all the efforts and offers of support that we have had from home and from around the world. We have been moved by the enormous willingness of people to do all they can to help find Madeleine," it said.

Some 150 police officers and dozens of volunteers have combed the countryside for days. Authorities said some units with sniffer dogs were still deployed but that most of the force had stood down after searching an 80-square-mile area several times.

Detectives were seen Friday checking rooms at the Ocean Club holiday village where the McCanns were staying when their daughter disappeared. Officers at the nearby border with Spain were carrying out spot checks of vehicles.

Madeleine's parents left her and her 2-year-old twin brother and sister alone while they went to a restaurant about 150 feet away. The parents say they checked on the children several times before Madeleine disappeared.

[Admin]

Parents of missing girl appeal for help on her birthday

Reuters
05/13/07

Praia Da Luz: A British girl kidnapped in Portugal spent her fourth birthday still missing yesterday, prompting a call from her parents for redoubled efforts to find her.

Madeleine McCann disappeared nine days earlier from her bed in a resort hotel where she had been on holiday with her parents in the Algarve.

"Today is our daughter Madeleine's fourth birthday," said Alex Woolfall, a representative for the holiday company used by parents Gerry and Kate McCann, speaking on their behalf.

"We would like to mark it by asking people to redouble their efforts to help find Madeleine."

Portuguese daily Correio de Manha reported police are looking for two men and a woman who were filmed on security cameras with a girl at a petrol station not far from the resort where Madeleine disappeared.

[Admin]

Madeleine grandma appeals for return

BBC NEWS
5/13/07

The grandmother of Madeleine McCann has appealed to those holding their "shiny star" to "take her somewhere safe" so she can be returned home.

Susan Healy told BBC News that people should look out for her granddaughter's distinctive "black flash" in her eye, where her pupil runs into her iris.

Madeleine disappeared from her parents' Portuguese holiday apartment on 3 May.

Mother Kate McCann said prayers at a church service in the Algarve village of Praia da Luz on Sunday.

Joining the service was the English priest who married Kate and Gerry McCann and later baptised Madeleine. Father Paul Seddon, of the Our Lady of Compassion church in Formby, near Liverpool, flew out to support the couple in Portugal.

Speaking from Liverpool, grandmother Mrs Healy said she and all the family were "hoping and praying that the people who have Madeleine will take her somewhere safe and we can find her and bring her home".

Relatives have released posters drawing attention to the distinctive marking in the youngster's right eye, which they say makes her easily recognisable.

A legal team has flown out to assist the family in Praia da Luz.

The lawyers are understood to be helping set up a special "fighting fund" to continue the search for Madeleine using donations from the public and to help the family with liaison.



Asking people to look out for her granddaughter, Mrs Healy said: "Please look at children, don't be afraid, go and look at children, look for this black flash that goes from her pupil to the iris of the eye.

"And if the people who have got Madeleine realise that she has this distinctive marking, take her somewhere safe. Leave her, you can run off, we don't care whether you get caught, that doesn't matter. We just want Madeleine back."

Describing the little girl, she said: "Madeleine is a bright, shiny star .... she is special".

Mrs Healy was speaking while attending the annual Liverpool 10k race, where runners were wearing T-shirts bearing Madeleine's photo to raise awareness of the missing youngster.

Posters and T-shirts were also given out at the Glasgow Women's 10k race.

Before Sunday's Premiership football match between Chelsea and Everton, the Liverpool club's players wore T-shirts featuring Madeleine's picture.

Rewards totalling £2.5m have been offered to anyone who can help with information leading to the safe return of Madeleine, from Rothley in Leicestershire.

Businessman Sir Richard Branson, footballer Wayne Rooney and children's author JK Rowling are among those who have contributed.

[Admin]

Search for girl focuses on Portugal villa, reports say

May 14, 2007

LISBON, Portugal (AP) -- Police searching for a 4-year-old British girl who disappeared 11 days ago in southern Portugal sealed off a villa Monday near where she is believed to have been abducted, according to news reports.

Detectives were questioning three people in Portimao, the nearest large town to Praia da Luz, Portugal's national news agency Lusa reported, citing unnamed police sources.

British broadcaster Sky News said one of the men who was reportedly being questioned lived at the villa with his British mother.

The man's father was Portuguese, the report said. The man had worked as a translator with police investigating the disappearance, according to Sky News.

Police began their search of the villa shortly after dawn after obtaining a search warrant, Portuguese public television Radiotelevisao Portuguesa reported.

The villa is about 100 meters (yards) from the Ocean Club holiday village where Madeleine McCann was apparently taken from her hotel room May 2.

Lusa cited unidentified police sources saying they were investigating "strong leads."

Madeleine McCann vanished after her parents left her, and her brother and sister, both aged 2, alone while they went to a nearby restaurant within their hotel complex at Praia da Luz, a vacation resort in Portugal's Algarve region.

Last week, police called off their ground search.

Earlier Monday, her father said they were considering how best to use expressions of support, including financial help, in the search for their daughter.

"There have been multiple offers of different forms of help, including financial pledges by people wishing to help Madeleine," Gerry McCann, the father, told reporters outside their hotel.

"We have brought in our lawyers to help us decide how best to use these offers of support to help us find Madeleine," he said in comments broadcast on Portuguese television.

British media have said that promised contributions total some 2.6 million pounds (euro 3.8 million, $5.1 million dollars), including reported donations from Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling, tycoon Sir Richard Branson and American Idol judge Simon Cowell.

Also, celebrities including soccer star David Beckham have made public appeals for help in finding Madeleine.

Gerry McCann said he and his wife, Kate, had taken strength from the "spiritual outpouring" around the world.

Asked how long they would stay in Portugal, Kate McCann said, "I can't even consider going home at the moment, absolutely can't even let it enter my head."

[Admin]

Madeleine McCann Family Believes Madeleine is No Longer in Portugal

By Lynda Johnson
The National Ledger
May 19, 2007

Police in the Madeleine McCann Case are now under scrutiny from observers. Robert Murat, the only suspect in the abduction of British girl Madeleine McCann hired a car in a hurry two days before police hauled him in for questioning. He also made a late night mystery call the night Madeleine McCann was abducted. Did police miss the clues? Madeleine, 4, was abducted from her family's holiday apartment in Praia da Luz, in the Algarve, on May 3 as her parents Gerry and Kate dined in a nearby tapas bar.

The focus of the investigation, sixteen days after Madeleine's disappearance, has returned to the Russian computer expert Sergey Malinka and his links with Robert Murat, the only formal suspect. Detectives have reportedly discovered that Mr. Murat telephoned Mr. Malinka on his mobile at 11.40pm on the day the four-year-old disappeared. Both men are maintaining their innocence and neither has been arrested.

So was the case botched by the cops? Reports reveal that police searching for Madeleine faced further accusations of incompetence on Friday after it emerged they had failed to seize footage holding potentially vital clues to the abduction of the British child.
Authorities revealed that detectives have not asked for surveillance pictures of vehicles leaving Praia da Luz at the time of Madeleine's disappearance.

Madeleine's family has also admitted for the first time that they no longer think she is in Portugal. Her aunt, Philomena McCann, revealed their belief in an email to well-wishers supporting the search. She said: "We don't believe Madeleine is in Portugal any more and need to get her picture and the story across Europe as quickly as possible."

There have been reports of sightings in the UK, Morocco, Crete, Switzerland and Spain. and police have admitted they failed to notify guards on the border with Spain until the morning after Madeleine had gone missing. That leaves plenty of time to take the abducted child out of the country.

[Admin]

Missing Madeleine's Parents' Close Friend Saw Her Abduction

Susheela Hegde
AHN
May 27, 2007

Praia Da Luz, Portugal (AHN) - A woman who is a close friend of the McCann couple has turned out to be "principal witness" to their daughter Madeleine's abduction from a holiday resort apartment.

Within hours of the missing alert, she recounted to police what she saw hours before while on her way to join her friends including Madeleine's parents in the restaurant.

The woman, also a British, said she saw the man near an open window of the apartment carrying a child wrapped in a blanket. She could see the distinguishable pink pajamas worn by the child. She also said she thought the way the man was holding the child was odd. But she thought "it was the man's own child." But at that time, the woman said, she did not find anything significant in it.

She even described the man as 35 to 40 years old, white complexion, about 5 feet 10 inches tall with a medium built. The description has been released by the police Friday.

She also said the was walking urgently. "But neither running nor walking, but in between."

The woman could connect the man with the four-year-old's kidnap only when the alarm was raised by Madeleine's parents. The woman said she was wracked with guilt.

The British toddler went missing while left sleeping with her younger siblings while her parents were out at a nearby restaurant for dinner in the Algarve resort town of Praia Da Luz on May 3.

The Portuguese police have not made any arrest so far and the McCanns couple has taken up a campaign to trace the missing daughter. Reports said they are planning meet the Pope in Rome as part of the campaign.

Recently the couple also received the support of Gordon Brown, the British prime minister in waiting. Portuguese police released the eyewitness account of the "principal witness" only after Brown's intervention, reports said.

[Admin]

Parents of Missing British Girl at Vatican

By Philip Pullella
Reuters
VATICAN CITY

The parents of a four-year-old British girl snatched from a Portuguese holiday resort nearly a month ago arrived at the Vatican on Wednesday hoping for comfort from a meeting with Pope Benedict.

"We have mixed emotions about being here," said Gerry McCann, Madeleine's father, as he and his wife Kate arrived to attend the Pope's general audience.

"Under normal circumstances it would be one of the most exciting things we could do in our own lifetime, but very much on our minds is the fact that we're here without Madeleine."

"This is a very nerve-racking experience."

Both parents, who are Catholics, were dressed in dark suits and Kate McCann held a pink fluffy toy cat that belongs to her daughter.

The Pope was due to greet the couple briefly at the end of his general audience in St Peter's Square. They were due to be put in a special VIP section next to the Pope in front of St Peter's Basilica.

Before coming to Rome, her parents said they hoped to draw profound strength from the audience and the meeting with the Pope as well as helping to publicize the campaign to find Madeleine, who disappeared on May 3.

Britain has been gripped by the McCann's tragedy and photographs of the blonde-haired child have rarely been off the front pages of British newspapers since her abduction.

She was snatched in the evening from a holiday resort apartment as her parents ate at a restaurant about 100 yards (meters) away, in sight of the apartment.