Portuguese Dam Site~, Police were focused their efforts Wednesday in a number of areas around a dam, including one where media sources claim a prime suspect in the case frequently resided, in an effort to find information surrounding the disappearance of Madeleine McCann, a British youngster who vanished in Portugal in 2007.
In response to a request from German officials, the most recent investigation into the disappearance got under way on Tuesday. At the Arade dam, which is around 50 kilometers (30 miles) from the beach resort of Praia da Luz where the 3-year-old girl was last seen 16 years ago, 30 Portuguese, German, and British police are participating in the operation. German public station NDR quoted Braunschweig prosecutor Christian Wolters as saying, “We have indicators that we could find evidence there. I don’t want to specify what that is, and I also don’t want to reveal the source of these clues.
Wolters stated, “The only thing that I would clarify is that it doesn’t come from the suspect—so we don’t have a confession or anything similar right now, or an indication from the suspect of where it would make sense to search, ” adding that “it was other indications that prompted us to conduct this search.” However, Wolters seemed to assuage hopes of what might be discovered by stating, “We never said that the girl disappeared where we are now searching.” On Tuesday, police were looking into a neighborhood where the suspect allegedly stayed around the time Madeleine vanished, according to Portuguese and Spanish media. The area, which is on the opposite side of the reservoir from the base camp that police erected on Monday, was being cleared by officers using a mechanical saw.
The search has not yet yielded any specific information from the police, but the top Portuguese newspaper Expresso reported on Wednesday that various items, including clothing and fabrics, had been gathered by the police. According to the report, earth was scraped up in areas where the sniffer dogs gave off signals, presumably hinting that biological traces were also being sought.
The investigation should be finished by Wednesday or Thursday.
Detectives from the three nations are still attempting to determine what transpired on the night of May 3, 2007, when the youngster vanished from her bed in the southern Portuguese resort. Her parents were having dinner with friends at a nearby restaurant, and she was in the same room as her twin siblings, who were 2 at the time.
According to Portuguese media, this is the fourth search for McCann after the initial one in the Algarve region in 2007 and additional ones in 2013 and 2014. In the year 2020, Germany underwent another search. German authorities declared a 45-year-old German national, named in the media as Christian Brueckner, who was in the Algarve in 2007, to be a suspect in the case in the middle of 2020. Any involvement has been refuted by Brueckner.
Brueckner was convicted of raping a 72-year-old lady in Portugal in 2005, and he is currently serving a seven-year prison term in Germany. He is being looked into in the McCann case, but no charges have been filed against him. He lived in Portugal for a long period, including at Praia da Luz around the time Madeleine vanished.
The drought that is afflicting Portugal and neighboring Spain has caused the reservoir to be less than half full at the moment. In years of typical rainfall, much of the area being examined would be below water. According to an email answer from the website created for the search for the kid, findmadeleine.com, Madeleine’s parents are holding off on responding due to the ongoing investigation.
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