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Post by Admin on Jun 12, 2014 5:18:57 GMT
Police investigating the disappearance of Madeleine McCann have arrived at a third search site near the Algarve holiday resort of Praia da Luz. British and Portuguese officers were seen entering the grounds of a property after using bolt cutters to open gates. Earlier, officers completed a search of grassy land about 15 minutes' walk from the resort - the second area they have searched in the past 10 days. Officers spent about three hours at the second area of scrubland - which is off the main road out of Praia da Luz - before removing the police cordon. Two dogs, from South Wales Police, were seen with their handlers inside the cordon, where officers concentrated on a smaller area marked out with police tape. Yellow and white police tape had earlier been stretched around the area and had been guarded by armed local police. The area included a plot of land with vegetables growing in the middle and a number of dilapidated outbuildings around it. The BBC's Tom Burridge, in Praia da Luz, said police focused on certain areas inside the cordon - as they did during searches last week. "It seems that they've mapped out or at least studied the ground beforehand and they have come to certain parts of this site which they believe could be of interest," he said. The BBC understands the land is owned by a construction company based near the Portuguese capital Lisbon and has been left as scrubland after permission to build on it was turned down. A source said Portuguese police had searched the land in 2007 - after Madeleine disappeared - and had visited the site "four or five times". It comes after a week-long search of another site - a 15-acre area of scrubland in Praia da Luz - was completed at the weekend and police cordons were removed on Sunday night. Portuguese police have said nothing of interest was found during last week's search. However, they announced "several suspects" were likely to be interviewed in the "very near future". UK police had already asked authorities if they could speak to three "people of interest", the BBC understands. British officers will be allowed to sit in, but cannot intervene in proceedings, Portuguese officials have said. The search resumed on Wednesday after a two-day pause because of a Portuguese national holiday. A variety of techniques, including the use of ground-penetrating radar and sniffer dogs, have already been employed by the team of officers from Portugal and the UK.
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Post by Admin on Jun 13, 2014 6:08:20 GMT
The new Madeleine McCann search site is in an area where a private investigator, working with her parents' support, said he found "evidence" of the missing girl soon after she vanished. But at the time his report was dismissed by a UK police adviser as "likely to be of low value" and Madeleine's parents Kate and Gerry agreed with that view. Former South African policeman Danie Krugel said he was disappointed that no one followed up his work. The area was searched by police on horseback in the early days of the investigation. The McCanns agreed to meet Mr Krugel in Praia da Luz in July 2007, two months after Madeleine disappeared, at a time when they were desperate for help. With the consent of the Portuguese police they gave him one of their daughter's hairs, which he said he could use to pinpoint her whereabouts. Mr Krugel used a mysterious hand-held device he claimed to have developed, but which he would not reveal or discuss with anyone. After spending several days in the resort he concluded that Madeleine was or had been in the area of scrubland now being examined. It is a desolate piece of land, only half-a-mile from the beach, popular with joggers and dog-walkers and linked by a series of footpaths to the McCanns holiday apartment. Mark Harrison, who was a national search advisor for the UK police, was dismissive in his analysis of Mr Krugel's report at the time. Mr Harrison wrote: "We feel he may have been attempting to give the impression he had developed and was using 'a remote laser-based gas-sensing device'. However, his claims regarding the distance of detection, up to 20km and the use of a hair sample are highly unlikely and would be a great innovation in the scientific world. As Krugel was not prepared to allow the device to be viewed or provide any specification data of readings or equipment and the fact that no known device currently exists commercially or academically, then I can only conclude that the information he has provided is likely to be of low value."
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Post by Admin on Jun 14, 2014 5:22:51 GMT
The parents of missing Madeleine McCann say the fact that recent searches found no trace of their daughter reinforces their belief she could still be alive. Kate and Gerry McCann said they were "very pleased" at the searches over the last 10 days in Praia da Luz, Portugal. Scotland Yard said there was still a "substantial amount of work" still to do in the investigation after three areas of land were searched. Madeleine was three when she went missing in the Algarve resort in 2007. Scotland Yard has said the searches, carried out with Portuguese officers and covering approximately 60,000 square metres, were the "first phase of this major investigation". In a statement released through their spokesman, Clarence Mitchell, Mr and Mrs McCann said: "We are very pleased that significant activity has taken place in Praia da Luz over the last 10 days with police officers and support teams from the UK working closely with the Policia Judiciaria and the Guarda Nacional Republicana. "We are further encouraged that despite the intensive searches, no trace of Madeleine has been found and this reinforces our belief that she could still be alive. As parents of a missing child, we have always wanted all reasonable lines of inquiry to be followed and it is gratifying to know that a substantial amount of work will take place over the coming months with the close co-operation of the British and Portuguese authorities. We would like to thank all those involved for their efforts and the members of the public who have come forward with information." A statement from Scotland Yard on Wednesday said "more activity has been agreed" with the Portuguese police, and that this was expected to start shortly. Police sources have previously revealed that after the land searches have been completed, Portuguese police are due to question "several suspects", who are described as "of interest" in the case. On Wednesday police could be seen searching two other sites near Praia da Luz with sniffer dogs. But the main focus of the land searches was on the first 15-acre site that police spent a week combing for evidence.
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Post by Admin on Jun 15, 2014 5:31:22 GMT
Earlier this year Scotland Yard detectives identified eight men they wanted to question over the three-year-old’s disappearance from Praia da Luz, Portugal, in 2007. Local legal chiefs have now given officers the go-ahead to speak to the suspects, according to the country’s respected state broadcaster RTP. The British team is preparing to haul in the unnamed men as part of work on a fresh investigation. It is believed three are suspected burglars who live close to wasteland now being searched. Another three are thought to be workers from the Ocean Club holiday complex where Madeleine and her parents, Kate, 46, and Gerry, 45, were staying when she was snatched. Scotland Yard identified the suspects after trawling through thousands of phone records. Detectives believe that Madeleine was taken by the gang of burglars – all convicted drug dealers – who panicked after accidentally waking her inside the holiday apartment. Analysis of phone company data revealed the trio made an unusually high number of calls to each other in the hours after she disappeared. Portuguese judicial authorities in Lisbon had to look at the evidence British officers had against all the suspects before allowing the Yard to question them on foreign soil. Detectives think the burglars carried out a previous break-in at the resort, disturbing another child, days before Madeleine vanished. The first youngster’s parents rushed in after hearing a disturbance to find the intruders had fled. Local police did not link the two incidents during their fruitless first inquiry. The Met has since carried out full background checks into all the men and their friends.
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Post by Admin on Jun 16, 2014 6:17:51 GMT
Clara Corrigan is recovering from 17 wounds inflicted in the attack, which took place about 30 miles from Praia da Luz, where Madeleine disappeared. Clara told her family from hospital: “When he made that threat I was absolutely terrified. I knew my life was in danger.” Now Clara, 39, from Liverpool, has said she would be willing to talk to Scotland Yard detectives who have just overseen a huge search operation on wasteland in Praia da Luz which failed to find any trace of Madeleine. She said she got really terrified when he said he had killed Madeleine McCann. She told the Portuguese police that and she was expecting to hear from Scotland Yard but so far no one has contacted her.” Scotland Yard would not say if they were aware of her claims. The man Clara says stabbed her is Briton Shane Leighton, who is being held in a prison on the Algarve. She was attacked in Albufeira on May 28 after she met trainee chef Leighton who was celebrating his 22nd birthday. Clara, a single mother of three, told Portuguese police that he invited her to his family home in the resort town where he was throwing a late-night birthday party. However, when she got to the terraced villa there was no party. Clara, who fell asleep, said: “I woke up with him on top of me, suffocating me. Then he shouted ‘I killed Madeleine McCann and I am going to kill you’.” She was stabbed up to 17 times on her buttocks and lower back. As dawn broke Shane’s grandmother Sylvia Leighton, 76, who owns the house with her husband Barry, found Clara lying in a pool of blood. Clara fled and police found her in the street. Shane was held at a nearby bus stop with no shirt on and bloodstains on his body. Clara was taken to hospital for emergency treatment for loss of blood and to have her wounds stitched. She has since returned to Liverpool. Shane was brought up from the age of two by his grandparents and they took him with them when they retired to Portugal in 2003. Sylvia told the Sunday Express that she thought that when Madeleine vanished Shane was staying in Worthing with his father. “He would have been 15 at that time and there is no way he was involved in anything to do with Madeleine McCann,” she said. “He was just a schoolboy.” Kate and Gerry McCann, of Rothley, Leicestershire, fly to Lisbon tomorrow to speak at a civil court in their long libel battle against former Portuguese detective Goncalo Amaral.
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