sixteen years later Madeleine McCann disappeared from Podgorica holiday apartment where she was sleeping with her newborn twin siblings, police have launched a major innovation for proof.
After languishing for many years since David Cameron’s Kickstarter finally failed Metropolitan Police An investigation into the 2011 disappearance of a three-year-old boy resurfaced in 2020 after German prosecutors revealed a new suspect.
But three years later, the 43-year-old convicted pedophile Christian Brueckner – who denies any connection to the missing youth – has not yet been charged, as he was jailed in a German prison for raping a 72-year-old American woman at the same resort two years before Madeleine’s disappearance. Is.
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Madeleine McCann went missing in Praia da Luz in May 2007
(PA)
However, police activity was seen on Monday at a reservoir some 30 miles from the Praia da Luz resort. was reported soon International officials are gearing up for a major new discovery this week, based on Brueckner’s repeated trips to the area he dubbed a “little slice of paradise.”
The latest discovery in the reservoir – one of six in the Algarve – is the first in portugal since 2014, and the Metropolitan Police has been given a further grant of £110,000 by the Home Office to search for Madeleine, who will be 20 years old this month.
This brings the total amount spent on the search for the Leicestershire-born girl, codenamed Operation Grange, to just £13.1m since 2011, and far less than the £300,000 approved by the Home Office the year before.
While the costs incurred by the German and Portuguese authorities are unknown, Lisbon’s then-Attorney General Fernando José Pinto Monteiro said in 2012 that the search for Madeleine was the most expensive in the country’s history.
As they began their renewed search on Tuesday near the Arade reservoir, police combed the banks of the waterway with sniffer dogs, rakes and pickaxes, emergency service divers seen on a rigid hull boat.
Police used pickaxes and divers to search for them on Tuesday
(AFP via Getty Images)
Also on the banks of the reservoir, emergency services and officials from Portugal, Germany and Britain were seen holding briefings near blue police tents.
Portuguese news outlet SIC said four teams of officers from the Portuguese Policia Judiciaria were involved in the operation, along with at least 20 of their German counterparts. A no-fly zone has been created over the water and media and other onlookers are being kept a mile back from the search site.
The reservoir was first discovered in 2008, at the height of efforts to find Madeleine, when Portuguese lawyer Marcos Arago Correia paid for expert divers to find it, claiming that Madeleine’s body was there, fueled by criminal contacts. Was tipped off.
Earlier this month, Madeleine’s parents Kate and Gerry McCann posted a short statement on their Find Madeleine campaign website to mark the anniversary of her disappearance.
He said: “Today is the 16th anniversary of the abduction of Madeleine. Still missing… still miss a lot. It’s hard to find words to express how we feel.
“The police investigation is ongoing, and we await a breakthrough.”
Additional reporting by PA