AN ITALIAN man held on suspicion of trying to extort money
from the parents of missing Madeleine McCann was due to
appear before Spain's National Court last night.
A Portuguese woman arrested with the man last Thursday was
brought before a court in southern
Spain, officials said.
Police said the pair were
suspected of trying to extort money from the McCanns with an
offer to provide information about their missing
four-year-old daughter. Neither has yet been charged.
Two Portuguese detectives who took part in the arrests and
a Portuguese police inspector said it was thought the two
might be involved in the girl's disappearance, but there was
no concrete evidence.
However, the Italian foreign ministry said Spanish
authorities had informed them that the man had no connection
with the girl's disappearance almost two months ago during a
family holiday in Portugal.
A court official in the southern town of
San Roque said the
Portuguese woman had appeared before a judge there
yesterday, and the Italian suspect was being taken to the National Court in Madrid to appear before
judges there.
The arrests last Thursday were ordered by a judge in the
southern town of Torremolinos.
The two were not identified by name.
Madeleine disappeared on May 3 after her parents left her
and her brother and sister, two-year-old twins, alone in
their room while they went to a restaurant inside their
hotel complex in Praia da Luz, a
resort town in the
Algarve
region.
The court appearances are the latest in a long series of
developments which have raised hopes of a breakthrough in
the hunt for the missing child.
However, no apparent leads in the international search have
proved substantial enough to solve the mystery of her
disappearance.
The search was initially concentrated on the country where
she vanished. Within a few days, police revealed they had
investigated 350 separate suspicious incidents. Local
expatriates said they spotted a young girl walking along a
road in a nearby town with two people.
A balding man was seen dragging a girl towards a marina in
the nearby town of Lagos. Another man was
seen driving away from a central Portuguese village at
speed.
All appeared to be false alarms. Attention then focused on
British man Robert Murat.
Police questioned him and searched the villa where he lives
with his mother, 160 yards from where Madeleine was
snatched.
He remains the only named suspect, but has not been charged
with any offences. He has denied any involvement with the
four-year-old's disappearance,
as has Russian computer expert Sergey
Malinka, who lives in the area and worked with Murat.
It was then reported that Portuguese police were carrying
out checks in England but
British police denied this.
They said a detective inspector from the Portuguese
investigation team visited the
Leicester incident room to meet the officers
involved on the British side of the investigation.
Leicestershire police are leading the case in the UK because that is where the family
comes from.
Twenty-two days after Madeleine's disappearance, police
issued a description of a possible suspect. He was seen
walking in Praia da Luz at
around 9.30pm on the night Madeleine was snatched.
He was holding a child, but was only seen from behind and
it was not clear in which direction he was heading. He was
described as white, between 35 and 40 years old, of medium
build and 5ft 10ins tall. The description led to hundreds of
calls to police but there was still no breakthrough.
The McCanns suspended their series of visits to Europe
after a call was received from a man in
Spain
claiming to know where Madeleine was. They delayed their
flight from Berlin and considered going back to the UK to help trace
the origin of the call.
The next development came when an anonymous letter sent to
Dutch newspaper De Telegraaf
claimed the child's body was buried in deserted scrubland
only nine miles from where she was abducted.
Portuguese police with sniffer dogs launched a search, but
the hunt was called off after just four hours. New hopes
were raised with a wave of sightings on the Mediterranean
island
of Malta
but none has proved to have substance. |
