Portuguese police, with the help of German and British colleagues, on Tuesday resumed the search for Madeleine McCann, the British girl who went missing in the country’s southern Algarve region 16 years ago.
Between 20 and 30 officers, some in uniform, could be seen in the area of the Arade dam, some 30 miles from Praia da Luz, where the 3-year-old girl was last seen alive in 2007.
Portuguese police had set up a blue tent and cordoned off the area for the media and the public. Eyewitnesses said police began searching shortly before 8 a.m. Tuesday in an area several miles away from the store. More than a dozen police cars and vans could be seen arriving in the area.
On Monday, Portuguese detectives issued a statement saying the search would resume at the request of German authorities and with the help of British officials.
German prosecutors in Braunschweig said in a written statement on Tuesday that «criminal procedural steps are currently being taken in Portugal as part of the investigation into the Madeleine McCann case.»
They added that “the measures are being implemented as mutual legal assistance by the Portuguese tax authorities with the support of officers from the Federal Criminal Police Office.”
“More detailed background information is not being released at this time for investigative tactical reasons,” the statement said.
In mid-2020, German officials said that a 45-year-old German citizen, identified by the media as Christian Brueckner, who was in the Algarve in 2007, was a suspect in the case. Brueckner has denied any involvement.
Brueckner is currently serving a seven-year prison sentence in Germany for a rape he committed in Portugal in 2005.
He is under investigation on suspicion of murder in the McCann case, but has not been charged. He spent many years in Portugal, including in Praia da Luz, around the time of Madeleine’s disappearance.
The case aroused worldwide interest for several years, with reports of sightings of her stretching as far as Australia, along with a large number of books and television documentaries on the case.
The rewards for finding Madeleine, who would now be 20 years old, reached several million dollars.
British, Portuguese and German police are still piecing together what happened the night the girl 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, they were 2 years old. the time, while her parents were having dinner with friends at a nearby restaurant.