(3 Jun 2025)
RESTRICTION SUMMARY:
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Atalaia, Portugal – 3 June 2025
1. Parked Portuguese police van in a dirt track, with a German plate van going past, leaving the search area
2. Other German police vans
3. Portuguese police officer on site
4. Various of fire engine leaving
5. Portuguese police car
6. Portuguese police officer
STORYLINE:
The first day of renewed searches related to the disappearance of British toddler Madeleine McCann came to a close in southern Portugal on Tuesday.
Vans with German and Portuguese officers onboard were seen leaving the area in Atalaia.
Detectives had spent the day searching near an abandoned rural building as they launched fresh probes near the holiday resort where she was last seen 18 years ago.
The case received worldwide interest for several years, with reports of sightings of McCann occurring as far away as Australia, while books and television documentaries were produced about her disappearance.
German investigators and Portuguese police officers and firefighters were searching in the countryside several miles from the Praia da Luz resort, where the 3-year-old disappeared from her bed while on vacation with her family on May 3, 2007.
Almost two decades on, investigators in the U.K., Portugal and Germany are still piecing together what happened on the night the toddler disappeared. She was in the same room as her brother and sister — 2-year-old twins — while their parents, Kate and Gerry, had dinner with friends outside.
Portuguese police said Monday that detectives were acting on a request from a German public prosecutor as they carry out “a broad range” of searches this week in the area of Lagos, in southern Portugal.
The main suspect is a German national identified by media as Christian Brueckner, who is currently serving a seven-year prison sentence in Germany for raping a 72-year-old woman in Portugal in 2005.
He is under investigation on suspicion of murder in the McCann case but hasn’t been charged. He spent many years in Portugal, including in Praia da Luz, around the time of the child’s disappearance. Brueckner has denied any involvement.
The last time police resumed searches in the case was in 2023, when detectives from the three countries took part in an operation searching near a dam and a reservoir about 50 kilometers (30 miles) from the resort.
McCann’s family marked the 18th anniversary of her disappearance last month, and expressed their determination to keep searching.
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