Portuguese police confirmed Monday that they are resuming the search for Madeleine McCann, the British girl who disappeared as a toddler from the villa where she and her family were staying during a 2007 vacation.
Her kidnapping from the resort in the Algarve region while parents Kate and Gerry McCann dined nearby made international headlines as Portuguese authorities accused them of covering up an accident and named them as suspects. They were later cleared.
Portugal’s Judicial Police said in a statement that German authorities had requested the search and British officials would be present. The search will resume in the next few days.
Madeleine was 3 when she was snatched from her bed on May 3, 2007, about 10 days before her fourth birthday. The McCanns have been looking for her ever since, vowing to find the truth about what happened to her. The girl would have been 20 on May 12.
Also in the room were her twin brother and sister, two years younger. They are turning 18 this year.
Police in Portugal did not give details on Monday about what prompted the search but said a more definitive statement would be released Tuesday.
In April of last year authorities said they had formally identified a suspect, but did not divulge the person’s name. The Public Ministry district of Faro, the Algarve region’s largest city, said at the time that it was working with German authorities and coordinating with British investigators.
In 2020 German authorities named a suspect, later identified as convicted sex offender Christian Brueckner. He was serving a sentence on drug offenses at the time and was scheduled to segue into a seven-year sentence for raping a 72-year-old American woman in Praia da Luz, Portugal, in 2005 — the same town that Madeleine would disappear from two years later.
Brueckner has said he was having sex in a trailer miles away when the girl vanished so could not possibly be the culprit. He has repeatedly denied involvement.
With News Wire Services