Police investigating the disappearance of Madeleine McCann are preparing to search in and near a reservoir in Portugal, according to multiple reports.
Madeleine McCann went missing on May 3, 2007, while on a family vacation in Praia da Luz, Portugal. An area near the Barragem do Arade reservoir, around 50km from Praia da Luz where Madeleine went missing in 2007, is being sealed off as German police prepare to start searching on Tuesday, Portuguese news website SIC reported.
It said that the prime suspect in her disappearance, convicted sex offender Christian Brueckner, spent time in the area between 2000 and 2017. Investigators believe the 45-year-old killed Madeleine, then aged three, after abducting her from a holiday apartment.
Brueckner, who has reportedly denied any involvement in the youngster’s disappearance, was identified as a murder suspect in the McCann case by Portuguese officials in June 2020. He is facing charges in Germany over a number of separate sex offences allegedly committed in Portugal during that time.
Both Portuguese and British police officers will be present while the search by German investigators is carried out, SIC said. It is not the first time that the reservoir has been searched.
At the time of her disappearance, Madeleine was just three years old. The case gained significant international media attention and became one of the most high-profile missing persons cases in recent history.
In 2008 Portuguese lawyer Marcos Aragao Correia paid for specialist divers to check the waterway after he claimed to have been tipped off by criminal contacts that her body was in the reservoir.
The most recent search in Portugal in relation to Madeleine’s disappearance was in 2014, when British police were given permission to examine scrubland near where she vanished. Madeleine's parents, Kate and Gerry McCann, had left her and her younger twin siblings alone in their holiday apartment while they dined at a nearby restaurant with friends. When they returned, they discovered that Madeleine was missing. Despite extensive efforts by the Portuguese police and private investigators, as well as the involvement of several international law enforcement agencies, Madeleine's whereabouts remain unknown.
The case has sparked widespread interest and generated numerous theories and speculation about what happened to Madeleine McCann. Her disappearance has been the subject of documentaries, books, and ongoing media coverage, keeping her name and story in the public consciousness for many years.
