Latest news with #Praiadaluz
The Sun
3 days ago
- General
- The Sun
Madeleine McCann search officially ENDS: Agony as JCB, radar & fingertip trawl of Brueckner's ‘rat run' turns up nothing
Could ground-penetrating radar help find Madeleine? As the latest search for Madeleine McCann enters a crucial phase, police appear to be using ground-penetrating radar in a fresh attempt to uncover long-buried clues. The operation, spanning 120 acres of scrubland and abandoned buildings near Praia da Luz, has seen officers clearing vegetation, wearing protective gear, and using a digger to shift rubble — all in a bid to access hidden terrain. Ground-penetrating radar (GPR) sends electromagnetic pulses into the ground, detecting changes in material and potential buried objects without the need for large-scale excavation. It's a method often used to locate graves and burial sites. While previous searches have turned up no evidence, hopes remain that the advanced technology could help detectives locate something vital in the hunt for answers — 18 years after Madeleine disappeared. With just two days left in the current operation, Portuguese police remain tight-lipped, offering conflicting signals about how successful the search has been so far.
The Independent
5 days ago
- General
- The Independent
What happened to Madeleine McCann? Timeline of the 18 year missing girl mystery as new search launched in Portugal
The search for Madeleine McCann has resumed, 18 years after the three-year-old girl from Rothley, Leicestershire, was reported missing from the Portuguese holiday resort of Praia da Luz on the Algarve. German police and forensics experts are focusing the renewed search effort around the Atalaia area, not far from where the McCanns had been holidaying and where their prime suspect in Madeleine's disappearance, Christian Brueckner, was staying at the time. Brueckner has denied any involvement in Madeleine's disappearance, and is currently serving a seven-year prison sentence in Germany for the rape of an elderly woman at her home in Praia da Luz in 2005. He is due to be released from prison in September. Here is a reminder of the events of the case. Madeleine disappears from her bed on 3 May, 2007 The story began when the McCanns – doctors Kate and Gerry, their three-year-old daughter Madeleine and her two-year-old twin siblings Amelia and Sean – joined a group of seven family friends and their five children on holiday at the Ocean Club in the village of Praia da Luz on the southwestern tip of Portugal on 28 April 2007. After a pleasant spring break by the sea, the adults in the party went out for dinner at the resort's open-air tapas bar on 3 May, gathering at 8.30pm. The children were left behind sleeping in their respective apartments with the doors unlocked and a rota system in place among the parents to ensure that someone returned every half-hour to check on them. When Kate McCann took her turn and returned to her apartment at 10pm, she raced back to the restaurant screaming 'Madeleine's gone! Someone's taken her!' The police were quickly called and 60 staff and fellow guests searched the complex, calling out the girl's name in vain until daybreak the following morning. Border police and airport staff were put on alert and hundreds of volunteers joined the efforts to find the missing girl over the coming days, the case fast becoming a sensation. The Portuguese authorities would later attract criticism over their conduct in the crucial earliest hours of the investigation when the trail might still have been warm, accused of making rudimentary mistakes like failing to conduct a house-by-house search of every local residence or interview all of the other guests at the resort, acting slowly to erect roadblocks and potentially compromising forensic evidence at the crime scene. The police initially stated that they believed Madeleine was still alive and had been abducted from the room by a stranger as the parents described their 'anguish and despair' over her vanishing, a worst fear realised for any parent. The search continued as the summer progressed amid a wild media circus and with huge fundraising activities underway, the McCanns setting up Madeleine's Fund on 15 May to raise cash to support further investigation and keep the profile of the case high, attracting generous donations from celebrities like Richard Branson, Simon Cowell, JK Rowling and Coleen Rooney. A local man, Robert Murat, subsequently became its first suspect and had his house and car searched, his swimming pool drained and his electronic devices confiscated but no evidence was found to link him to Madeleine and the matter was soon dropped. By June, the Portuguese police admitted that they had failed to protect potentially useful evidence at the scene as frustration with the lack of developments grew and the media began to question whether the McCanns themselves had been involved in the matter. Lurid tabloid allegations suggested the couple and their friends might have been swingers and that the McCanns, as physicians, might have been in the habit of sedating their children, while others claimed inconsistencies in their version of events. These claims were all totally false. In July, British police sent over two springer spaniel sniffer dogs to search for DNA. Spotlight turns to Madeleine's parents Relations with the local authorities would ultimately sour as the latter came to resent British intrusion into a Portuguese inquiry, according to Anthony Summers and Robbyn Swan's book Looking for Madeleine (2014). By August 2007, Madeleine had been missing for 100 days and police admitted for the first time that she may never be found. They also told the McCanns that they were no longer considering the matter an abduction case but, rather, a murder inquiry. The McCanns themselves were interviewed as 'arguidos' (suspects) by Portuguese police in September 2007, with the parents told that the dogs had discovered DNA evidence from the missing girl in the boot of their holiday rental car, lines of inquiry that had already been leaked to the British press. They vehemently denied having any part in her disappearance. Despite being listed as suspects (a designation that would linger until the following July), the McCanns were allowed to return to Britain on 9 September. A day later, chief inspector Tavares de Almeida of the Policia Judiciaria in Portimao signed a nine-page report claiming that Madeleine had died in the apartment along with a series of other unproven allegations. On 2 October, chief inspector Goncalo Amaral was removed from the case and transferred after alleging that the British police were only interested in pursuing leads favourable to the McCanns. He would later publish a book, Maddie: The Truth of the Lie, the following summer, resulting in a lengthy libel battle with the McCanns that would run back and forth through the courts until March 2017. Their claim against Mr Amaral was unsuccessful. Back in Britain, Gerry McCann issued a video that November in which he speculated that his family had been watched by a 'predator' during their stay at Praia da Luz. His wife had come to believe that a potential perpetrator could have seen a note in the resort's guest book visible to all in reception noting their dining arrangements on the evening of Madeleine's disappearance. The couple followed up on 20 January 2008 by releasing a sketch of a 'creepy man' they said other holidaymakers had said they had seen loitering at the Ocean Club. In April, a month before the one-year anniversary of the fateful night, Portuguese police travelled to Leicestershire to conduct further interviews with the McCanns' friends. McCanns are cleared, Scotland Yard pick up the case Then, on 21 July 2008, Portugal's attorney general, Fernando Jose Pinto Monteiro, announced that there was no evidence to link either the McCanns or Robert Murat to the disappearance and closed the case, unsolved. With the trail cold and no closure in sight, the McCanns continued to publicise their cause, issuing computer-generated images of how Madeleine might look now that she had aged on 3 November 2009 and condemning the release of previously unseen Portuguese police files – detailing possible sightings of their daughter – to British newspapers in March 2010. The McCanns published a book of their own about their ordeal in May 2011, entitled simply Madeleine, which was serialised in The Sun as the newspaper led a campaign calling on then British prime minister David Cameron to launch a new inquiry. He did so. Commenced by then-home secretary Theresa May, the Metropolitan Police's Operation Grange would be led by commander Simon Foy and comprise a team of three detective inspectors, five detective sergeants, 19 detective constables and six civilian staff. It began to yield results in 2013, with Scotland Yard formally announcing a new investigation in July and saying in October it had identified 41 potential suspects. That same month, BBC Crimewatch released an e-fit image of a man of particular interest who had been seen in Praia da Luz with a child matching Madeleine's description in May 2007. Detectives arrived in Portugal in January 2014 promising new arrests and finally searched the village in June, interviewing four people the following month but without unearthing new information. The quartet would be definitively ruled out in April 2017, before the UK government said it would continue to fund the investigation until 2020, having already admitted it had cost £10m in its first four years of operation. That investment had enabled detectives to have tens of thousands of documents translated, investigate over 8,000 potential sightings, take 1,338 statements, collect 1,027 exhibits and investigate 650 sex offenders and 60 persons of interest, all without definitively establishing the truth. New suspect shoots case back into the spotlight The Madeline McCann case lay dormant before suddenly exploding into life in June 2020 when German media revealed that Christian Brueckner, a 43-year-old prisoner with a track record of child abuse and drug trafficking, had been identified as a new suspect by the public prosecutor of the German city of Braunschweig. He had reportedly been living in a Volkswagen camper van in the Algarve at the time of Madeleine's disappearance and one woman has since come forward to suggest she saw a girl that might have been Madeleine speaking German in a supermarket in Portugal in 2017. German investigators classified their probe into his movements as a murder inquiry, saying they were working on the assumption that Madeleine is dead and reporting in July 2021 that they had found an abandoned cellar beneath his former allotment near Hanover where she could, theoretically, have been held captive. Hans Christian Wolters, the prosecutor leading the investigation into Brueckner, has said he was 'very confident' the inmate is responsible for kidnapping her. 'If you knew the evidence we had you would come to the same conclusion as I do but I can't give you details because we don't want the accused to know what we have on him – these are tactical considerations,' he told the BBC. Portuguese police formally made Brueckner a suspect in relation to the case on 21 April 2022. Following their unsuccessful libel claim against Mr Amaral, the former chief inspector who had investigated the disappearance, the McCanns applied to the European Court of Human Rights on the ground that the Portuguese legal system had breached their right to be presumed innocent. But on 19 September 2022, the Court rejected their claim. In February 2023, a Polish woman called Julia Faustyna made headlines by claiming she was Madeleine, using the Instagram name @iammadeleinemccann. Ms Faustyna, 21, did not provide any supporting evidence but sought DNA tests to prove her origins. The results ultimately revealed that she was entirely of Polish origin, with no British heritage, disproving her claims. In April 2023, a court in Braunschweig dropped a rape charge against Brueckner, unrelated to the McCann case, concluding it did not have jurisdiction, while police in Germany continued to claim they had'concrete evidence' that Madeleine is dead. McCanns 'await a breakthrough' as they mark 16 years since Madeleine's disappearance On 2 May 2023, Madelein's parents posted a statement on the Find Madeleine website on 3 May 2023 marking the latest anniversary of their daughter's disappearance, reiterating their hopes of being reunited with her one day. 'The police investigation continues, and we await a breakthrough. Thank you to everyone for your support – it really helps.' Portuguese police also reportedly apologised to the parents of for the way detectives investigated the case and treated the family. Later that month, the case unexpectedly lurched back into life in when investigators launched a major search operation at a reservoir in the Algarve, with Mr Wolters saying they were acting on 'certain tips' from Brueckner, whom the prosecutor said he remains 'very confident' holds the key to Madeleine's disappearance. With help from Portuguese police and with Scotland Yard detectives watching on, German investigators carried out a thorough examination of the Barragem do Arade beauty spot in Silves. They combed the shoreline and surrounding grasslands with sniffer dogs, rakes, spades and pickaxes and inspected the water in a rigid-hull inflatable boat. A no-fly zone was put in place in the skies overhead to allow police drones to survey the region undisturbed. The site is located approximately 30 miles northeast of the Ocean Club resort, from which the missing girl first disappeared. Renewed urgency in search for evidence In October 2024, Bruekner was acquitted of rape and sexual abuse charges against separate children in Portugal between 2000 and 2017 following an eight-month trial. Brueckner has been serving a seven-year sentence for the 2005 rape of a woman in Portugal's Algarve region, in the area where Madeleine went missing, and that sentence is due to end in September. In January this year Braunschweig Chief Public Prosecutor Hans Christian Wolters admitted there was no current prospect of charging Brueckner over Madeleine's disappearance, as police were still trying to secure forensic evidence linking Bruekner to the case. Then in March, Wolters confirmed to The Independent that Brueckner had filed a motion for early release. German police have since been granted permission to undertake a widespread search of key areas in Portugal in a hunt for evidence, including Madeleine's body. The search, running from 2 June to 6 June, is focused on an area around the spot where Brueckner had been living at the time of Madeleine's disappearance.
The Independent
5 days ago
- General
- The Independent
Will Christian Brueckner ever face charges over the disappearance of Maddie McCann?
The assertion that 47-year-old Christian Brueckner could be the prime suspect in the disappearance of Madeleine McCann looked a little thinner when he was acquitted in October on five unrelated sexual offences – two of which involved children – following a trial that began in February 2024. Despite the huge amount of interest around Christian Brueckner's past, the verdicts were no great surprise. They had been anticipated since last July when the presiding Judge, Uta Inse Engemann, in the German regional court of Braunschweig had ruled that there was 'no longer sufficient evidence of guilt for all of the charges'. Brueckner, a German national, remains in jail, serving the final months of a seven-year sentence for the rape of a 72-year-old American woman in 2005 at the Ocean Club resort in Praia da Luz — the same hotel where Madeleine went missing two years later. But as he seeks early release from the 2019 sentence, police in Germany are hurrying to charge the prime suspect in the disappearance of the British toddler before he walks free from prison in the next two weeks. It is now more than five years since Brueckner was first named and identified as the 'prime suspect' in the alleged abduction and murder of Madeleine, a few days before her 4th birthday, and longer still since he initially became a focus of investigation. There has been intense media speculation about his links to the McCann case and these were heightened by reporting of the often lurid details during his last trial. Engemann was alert to the risks of bias and the need to make a decision on the evidence alone. She reportedly referred in her final remarks to the judges' oath to serve the truth. 'This oath means that we don't have to cater to the views of the media and the table of regulars in a pub,' said Engemann. 'Everyone had heard about him in the Maddie McCann case. And they all knew that Brueckner since 2020 was always named by the public prosecutor's office. When in the media a person is described as a sex monster and a pervert, then it influences the witness.' Her comments brought to a close proceedings marked by sometimes ill-tempered exchanges between the prosecutor Lindemann and her court opponent, Brueckner's defence lawyer, Friedrich Fulscher, who had complained of the prosecution tactics, attacking the judges and the defence team and being, as Fulscher put it, 'particularly concerned with maximising damage' to the court and the trial. The prosecutor had wanted a 15-year jail sentence for Brueckner. In the end, she got nothing, During the BBC's Panorama programme at the end of 2023 with Brueckner's new trial imminent, Hans Christian Wolters, the chief public prosecutor for Braunschweig, repeated his claim that 'we think [Brueckner] was involved in the disappearance of Madeleine McCann and we think that he murdered Madeleine McCann.' But if there is evidence to make such a public declaration, why hasn't Brueckner ever been charged in Madeleine's disappearance? And if there is no evidence, why has the prosecutor repeatedly asserted his belief in Brueckner's guilt? Brueckner is a German drifter with a long criminal history, including sexual offences against children. His latest trial concerned alleged incidents in Portugal, in or not far from Prai da Luz, between 2000 and 2017. There were three counts of rape and two of indecent assault against children. In one of the rapes the 20-year-old complainant's attacker had worn a mask throughout and claimed she had recognised Brueckner, she said, by his eyes. There was evidence of a cell confession, and accounts of others who had stolen video tapes from Bruckner which they said they had watched, that depicted his attacks on two women. But the tapes were not available so the accounts could not be validated. One of the rape charges had been withdrawn before the final verdicts. A psychiatrist, Dr Christian Riedeman, giving evidence for the prosecution, told the court that Brueckner was in 'the absolute top league of dangerousness' to society and highly likely to reoffend on release. But it was then revealed the psychiatrist had not worked with or directly examined Brueckner, who had refused to see him. Brueckner's voice was the one missing from his trial – he never gave evidence, and only spoke once briefly at the end, when the judge asked him if he had anything he wanted to say: he was described as leaning forward and quietly stating, 'no, I would not like to'. There seems little doubt that Brueckner is a habitual and manipulative violent offender. His 2019 trial and conviction for the rape of the 72-year-old in Prai da Luz, made clear the elements of his sadistic pleasure in that offence. But, to emphasise the current position, he has never been charged in Madeleine McCann's case and his lawyer, Friedrich Fulscher spoke on Brueckner's behalf to Panorama, complaining of his client facing 'trial by media' in what Fulscher called one of the most famous cases in the world. The evidence against Brueckner was 'flimsy', he said, and 'lacking in substance'. Brueckner himself has always denied any role in Madeleine's abduction. 'Trial by media' has a familiar and discordant ring in this case. That is exactly what Gerry and Kate McCann were subjected to over 16 years ago by Portugal's Policia Judiciaria (PJ) – the equivalent of the CID – who began leaking outlandish claims about them to the press before finally making them arguidos – suspects – in their own daughter's disappearance. The details are painfully familiar. On 3 May 2007, the McCanns were holidaying in apartment 5a at the Ocean Club, Praia da Luz on the Algarve coast of southern Portugal. Unusually, it was not a gated resort but open to the town. Madeleine, who would have celebrated her fourth birthday nine days later, was sharing the back bedroom overlooking the street. She was in one of two single beds, furthest from the window, her twin siblings (now 18) were in travel cots between the beds. While they slept, their parents were in the Tapas restaurant nearby with their friends. Madeleine disappeared in the 55 minutes between Gerry's check at about 9.05pm and Kate's visit at 10pm, when she discovered Madeleine was gone. One of their friends had checked about 9.30 but, agonisingly, could not be sure afterwards that Madeleine was in bed. I went out to Praia da Luz in the summer of 2007 to report on the case and was there when it became apparent the McCanns were coming under suspicion. The events I witnessed transformed an investigation into a circus, as the world's media turned its cameras on the McCanns arriving to be quizzed at PJ headquarters in Portimao. They had tragic and far-reaching consequences for the investigation of what had happened to Madeleine and for her parents. As I reported at the time, the PJ – led by its misguided chief investigator Goncalo Amaral – had made a catastrophic misjudgement and 'abandoned the abduction theory', instead building an implausible case against Gerry and Kate McCann based on a misreading of DNA traces found in the boot of their car (which they had not hired until three weeks after the disappearance) and a pair of sniffer dogs brought over from the UK, whose 'alerts' at the car and in the apartment were somehow – and wrongly – taken to be hard evidence. Based on these 'facts', a theory was concocted that the couple had accidentally overdosed Madeleine with a sedative, she had died in the apartment, and they had secretly disposed of her body. Bizarrely, they offered Kate McCann a deal during her interrogation: she could admit to the crime, serve two years in prison and Gerry would be free to go home. She of course declined. They were both doctors, on holiday with a group of friends ('The Tapas 7'), how could they have carried out such an appalling crime? Had they hidden it all from their friends, or were the friends in on the conspiracy? It made no sense then and even less now. As the press seized on PJ leaks of reported inconsistencies in their accounts, the findings of the dogs, the DNA etc, I was often a lone exception to the general assumption that the McCanns were guilty – a phenomenon that quickly spread from Portugal to the UK. I remember arguing with an editor about their supposed role in Madeleine's 'death'. 'But what about the dogs, David? The dogs don't lie.' But they did 'lie'. The McCanns returned to England bound by 'judicial secrecy' – an official code of silence – which evidently did not apply to the Portuguese side who had leaked so much, including the names and contact details of all the McCanns' holiday group to a friendly Portuguese reporter. 'The secrecy code is like the speed limit,' a local journalist told me, 'Everyone knows it but no one keeps to it.' Soon after their return, at their invitation, I travelled to the McCanns' home in Rothley, Leicestershire, and went to the pub with Gerry McCann where we sat in a quiet corner and broke the secrecy code while he 'briefed' me for two or three hours on what had really happened that night. He took my notebook and drew a plan of the apartment showing the location and layout of the children's bedroom and how the abductor could have gone in and out unnoticed. If people recognised him in the pub they left Gerry alone. His stress was evident but he wanted to talk and afterwards took me home where I waited in the kitchen for a taxi. Madeleine's star chart for going to sleep well at night was pinned to the fridge. Speaking up for the McCanns exposed me to a little of what they have been going through ever since in terms of trolling on the internet and social media. I was called a McCann 'shill', doing the couple's 'bidding', and mocked for supposedly being a gullible investigative journalist. I described those people at the time as web ghouls, feasting on the misery of the McCann family while largely hiding behind anonymity on Twitter/X and elsewhere. In one very sad case, a woman, Brenda Leyland, revealed by Sky News as the real person behind the anonymous McCann troll Sweepyface on Twitter, took her own life. She had posted hundreds of messages attacking and accusing the McCanns. She was not the worst, by far. Even though the McCanns were officially released from arguido status by the PJ in 2008 when it closed its investigation, the trolls have never let up. They were back out in force whenever they are back in the news – #mccann – comparing Gerry McCann to child murderers and so on. The couple have shown extraordinary resilience in all the circumstances, no doubt focused on raising Madeleine's siblings, Amelie and Sean. Amelie attended a vigil this year on the anniversary of her sister's disappearance. There was never any doubt in my mind that this was a case of – as the jargon goes – stranger or non-familial child abduction and nothing to do with the parents. The McCanns, as I saw them, were then functioning at the limits of human endurance; their gaunt, strained faces speaking to a world of loss and no doubt guilt at not being there to protect their child. They have always clung to the hope that, in the absence of any evidence to the contrary, Madeleine could still be alive. As Gerry told Crimewatch during an increasingly rare public appearance in 2013, there are cases where abducted children are kept alive. No doubt he was thinking of Natascha Kampusch, among others, who escaped her abductor in 2006 –aged 18 – after being held captive in Austria for eight years. Stranger abductions of children are very rare. They can be opportunistic and the openness of the Ocean Club could have presented the opportunity to a watchful predator, who may have observed the family's routine and the vulnerability of their corner apartment. This week's Panorama referenced sightings of a so-called 'spotty man' and recreated scenes of him watching their accommodation. An offender profile might well focus on local drifters, with a history of sexual offences. If only a police inquiry had dwelt on this from the beginning. The Met Police took up the case in 2011, its Operation Grange starting from scratch and their briefings spoke of patterns of increased burglaries in Praia da Luz in the months before the McCanns arrived, and unsolved sightings of men in the vicinity before and after the disappearance. It has been reported that Christian Brueckner's name was buried in the case files and that the PJ had made some cursory attempt to track him down before he came to the Met as a tip and they passed it onto the German authorities who opened their own investigation. The PJ also reopened an investigation and travelled to the UK where they reportedly provided an update to Gerry McCann. Panorama said they had apologised to the McCanns for the harm its original investigation had caused. No sooner had the apology been disclosed than the truth of it was being disputed on Twitter/X. It is certainly true that Brueckner fits what you could imagine a guilty profile would look like. He committed his first sexual offence against a child when he was still a child himself, aged 16. He appears to have been an active criminal for most of his adult life, drifting back and forth between Germany and Portugal, living in the very resort, Praia da Luz where Madeleine was taken, at the time of her abduction. It was there in 2005 that he raped the 72-year-old woman. Searches have yielded a buried USB stick containing child pornography and he is said to have been on the phone near the Ocean Club around the time of Madeleine's disappearance. He changed the registration of a car soon after and went on to commit other offences in Portugal and Germany. But, as the acquittals in his latest trial show, it is a dangerous game, to assume guilt, to try and fit the suspect to the crime. That's how miscarriages of justice occur. It is evidence that matters and answers that Gerry and Kate McCann hope for and, you may think, earnestly deserve. No doubt they are among the very many people waiting to see what will happen with Brueckner, and if the prosecutor Hans Christian Wolters will ever make the case against him in court – and not just in the media.
The Sun
5 days ago
- General
- The Sun
Madeleine McCann search LIVE: Cops begin ‘now or never' hunt in race against time to nail suspect Christian Brueckner
German police face a ticking clock to finally get enough evidence to charge prime suspect Christian Brueckner. The new search for Madeleine will focus on extensive groundworks that took place at the time she vanished. A police theory is the three-year-old or her pyjamas might have been dumped in trenches near the Ocean Club in Praia da Luz where her family were staying in May 2007. At least 30 agents from Germany's FBI — the BKA — acting on a tip-off arrived in the Portuguese resort on Monday. They are equipped with ground-penetrating radar that can scan 15ft below the surface. The search area will include a cottage half a mile away used by the main suspect, German-national Brueckner, 48, and nearby scrubland. The area was a rat run for prolific thief Brueckner and leads to the property where he raped a US woman in 2005 — for which he is currently in a German jail. A source said: 'It's now or never.'
The Guardian
6 days ago
- General
- The Guardian
German police launch fresh searches in Portugal in Madeleine McCann investigation
German police investigating the disappearance of Madeleine McCann are to carry out fresh searches in Portugal this week, 18 years after the three-year-old went missing. German authorities said they are receiving support from Portuguese law enforcement. They last carried out searches in the country in 2023 near the Barragem do Arade reservoir, about 30 miles from the resort of Praia da Luz. Madeleine disappeared in 2007 while on holiday with her family at the resort after her parents went out to dinner and left her sleeping in a room with her toddler twin siblings. The prime suspect in the case is Christian Brueckner, who is serving a seven-year prison sentence in Germany for the rape of an elderly woman at her home in Praia da Luz in 2005. Brueckner, who spent time in the area between 2000 and 2017, had photographs and videos of himself near the reservoir. He has denied any involvement in her disappearance. The Sun reported that searches are to be carried out this week. A spokesperson for the Metropolitan police said: 'We are aware of the searches being carried by the BKA (German federal police) in Portugal as part of their investigation into the disappearance of Madeleine McCann. 'The Metropolitan police Service is not present at the search. We will support our international colleagues where necessary.' The area near the Barragem do Arade reservoir had previously been searched in 2008, when Portuguese lawyer Marcos Aragao Correia paid for specialist divers to search it after he claimed to have been tipped off by criminal contacts that Madeleine's body was there. Later, in 2014, British police were given permission to examine scrubland near where she vanished. Last month Madeleine's family marked the 18th anniversary of her disappearance, describing her as 'beautiful and unique' before her 22nd birthday and expressing their determination to keep searching. Sign up to First Edition Our morning email breaks down the key stories of the day, telling you what's happening and why it matters after newsletter promotion A statement from her parents, Kate and Gerry McCann, and the family said: 'The years appear to be passing even more quickly and whilst we have no significant news to share, our determination to 'leave no stone unturned' is unwavering. We will do our utmost to achieve this.' In April, ministers approved more than £100,000 in additional funding for Scotland Yard detectives investigating Madeleine's disappearance. Brueckner is due for release from prison in September, after which he would be free to leave Germany. The Sun reported that a well-placed Portuguese source confirmed this week's operation was scheduled to get under way on Tuesday but said some preparation work may take place beforehand. The source was reported saying: 'They will be land searches only. The main objective is to look for any signs of Madeleine's body.' The search is expected to last around three days unless anything relevant emerges, the paper said.
