Portuguese police, with the support of German and British officers, have resumed their search for Madeleine McCann, the British child who disappeared 16 years ago in the country’s southern Algarve region
From
FILIPE BENTO Associated Press
May 23, 2023 5:04 am ET
• 4 min reading
ARADE DAM, Portugal – Police on Tuesday resumed their search for Madeleine McCann, the British child who went missing in Portugal in 2007. Officials dug and scraped the surface of land near a dam near where she went missing.
About 20 officers with rakes and hoe-like tools lined up and began puncturing and raking the ground near the Arade Dam, which is about 50 kilometers (30 miles) from the resort of Praia da Luz, where the 3- The one year old girl was last seen 16 years ago.
The police also scanned the area from above with a drone and searched with sniffer dogs on both sides of the dam. Firefighters also searched the reservoir with a rubber dinghy.
There was no immediate indication of progress.
A media briefing is expected at the end of the raids on Wednesday or Thursday.
The operation, led by the Portuguese police with the support of German and British colleagues, was announced on Monday. Portuguese officials said it followed a request from German authorities.
The Portuguese police set up several tents on Monday and cordoned off the area for the media and the public. More than a dozen cars and police vans arrived early Tuesday.
Between 20 and 30 officers, some in uniform, were on site. Witnesses said police began searching just before 8 a.m
According to Portuguese media, this is the fourth search for McCann, after the first in 2007 in the Algarve and further attempts in 2013 and 2014. Another search took place in Germany in 2020.
This search is believed to be the first police search in the dam area, but this could not be immediately confirmed.
Due to a drought in Portugal and neighboring Spain, the reservoir is currently less than half full. The area where police worked with the tools would be submerged in years of normal rain.
In mid-2020, German officials said a 45-year-old German national, identified by the media as Christian Brückner, who was in the Algarve in 2007, was a suspect in the case. Brueckner has denied any involvement.
Brückner is currently serving a seven-year sentence in Germany for the 2005 rape of a 72-year-old woman in Portugal.
He is being investigated on suspicion of murder in the McCann case, but no charges have been brought against him. He spent many years in Portugal, including in Praia da Luz around the time of Madeleine’s disappearance.
The German public prosecutor’s office in Braunschweig said in a written statement on Tuesday that criminal procedural measures were being carried out in Portugal as part of the Madeleine McCann case and that officials from the Federal Criminal Police Office were involved.
According to the statement, more detailed information could not be given for “tactical reasons”.
The Madeleine McCann case attracted worldwide interest for several years, with reports of Madeleine McCann sightings stretching as far as Australia, and a number of books and television documentaries about the case.
The rewards for finding Madeleine, now 20, ran into millions of dollars.
British, Portuguese and German police officers are still reconstructing what happened the night the toddler disappeared from her bed in the southern Portuguese resort on May 3, 2007. She was in the same room as her twin brother and sister, who were two, at the time while their parents were having dinner with friends at a nearby restaurant.
With a view to the recent searches, Braunschweig public prosecutor Christian Wolters said on Tuesday that the investigations would be carried out “on the basis of certain indications”, but did not want to give any further details.
According to an email response from findmadeleine.com, a website set up to search for the child, Madeleine’s parents have not commented due to the ongoing investigation.
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Kirsten Grieshaber in Berlin and Ciarán Giles and Jennifer O’Mahony in Madrid contributed to this report.