Vast police search for Madeleine McCann evidence launched in Algarve

Portuguese and German police on Tuesday launched joint searches of a “vast” area in Portugal's southern Algarve region for new evidence related to the 2007 disappearance of three-year-old British child Madeleine McCann.

The scale of the searches could be the most extensive since the initial investigation was closed in 2008, a year after Madeleine went missing while on holiday with her family in the Algarve town of Praia da Luz.

Her disappearance sparked a frenzied search and gained the attention of the world's media. She has never been found.

Fresh though relatively focused searches were ordered by Portuguese, British and German police of scrubland, wells and reservoirs in 2014, 2020 and 2023. None of the  searches were confirmed to have yielded significant evidence.

Portugal's investigative judicial police (PJ) said on Monday they would execute search warrants at the behest of the public prosecutor's office in Germany's Braunschweig, which in 2022 formally identified German national Christian Brueckner as an official suspect in the case.

The search operation is expected to end on Thursday, said a spokesperson for the public prosecutor's office in the northern German city of Braunschweig.

A source involved in the search said the targeted area was “vast”, with police using ground-penetrating radar across several hectares. Portuguese officers were following instructions from German police under a European investigation order.

Reuters footage showed uniformed PJ officers in a cordon on a dirt road in Atalaia, a neighbourhood of Lagos municipality, waving through unmarked vans and cars with German licence plates from the city of Wiesbaden, where the federal criminal police office (BKA) has its headquarters.

The BKA is assisting Portuguese law enforcement with “criminal procedural measures”, Braunschweig prosecutors told Reuters, declining to provide further details.

The occupants of one of the German vehicles wore bucket hats, clothing with camouflage patterns and bandannas covering their faces.

A van belonging to Portugal's maritime police also arrived. The force has jurisdiction over coastal areas and took part in previous searches of beaches, wells and reservoirs using specialist divers.

The road the police cordoned off is located close to a golf course and less than 1km from the beach. The search area was close to a property Brueckner lived in, a neighbour told Reuters in 2020, though when was unclear.

German police said in June 2020 Madeleine was presumed dead and Brueckner, in his 40s, was probably responsible. He has denied responsibility.

Brueckner, a convicted child abuser and drug dealer, is behind bars in Germany for raping a 72-year-old woman in the same area of the Algarve. His sentence runs until September, meaning he is set for release unless prosecutors find enough evidence to charge him over Madeleine's disappearance.

In January, Sky News quoted the German prosecutor investigating Madeleine's disappearance as saying there was no prospect of charges being brought against Brueckner.

Reuters