Madeleine McCann investigators questioning Britons as new official suspects over the girl's disappearance in Portugal
The Britons are among seven people due to be questioned as 'arguidos'
The seven suspects know the Praia da Luz resort where Madeleine, then aged three, vanished from on May 3 2007, it was reported.
Some are said to have criminal records, reports Portuguse newspaper.
By Gerard Couzens for MailOnline
Published: 09:48, 10 November 2014 | Updated: 09:53, 10 November 2014
Britons will be quizzed as new suspects over missing Madeleine McCann's disappearance, it was claimed today.
The British nationals are among a group of seven people due to be questioned as arguidos - a Portuguese legal term roughly translating as 'formal suspect' - leading Portuguese daily Jornal de Noticias reported.
Four more will be interviewed as witnesses towards the end of the month at a police station in Faro
The seven suspects know the Praia da Luz resort where Madeleine, then aged three, vanished from on May 3 2007, know each other and made phone calls the night she disappeared, Jornal de Noticias said.
Some are also said to have criminal records and others are ex-workers of the Ocean Club holiday resort where Madeleine, three at the time, was staying with her parents.
It is not known how many of the group of seven, which also includes Portuguese nationals, are British.
Neither was it clear last night if they continue to live in Praia da Luz or have now moved away from the town
The fact they are set to be questioned as arguidos show the Operation Grange officers probing Madeleine's disappearance are still focusing on the theory she was killed during a bungled break-in.
Three of the four suspects questioned at the start of July were quizzed because British police suspected they were involved in a burglary at apartment 5A where Madeleine was sleeping with her twin siblings Sean and Amelie, now nine.
At least one of the 11 people set to be quizzed later this month is thought to be a woman.
British police are now in the process of formally asking for permission to sit in on the interviews, which will be led by Portuguese officers who will ask questions on their behalf. The Operation Grange team last visited Portugal a month ago.
A small team of three officers including DCI Andy Redwood met Policia Judiciaria bosses in Faro for an update meeting before travelling to the university city of Coimbra a five hour drive north to visit a lab where many of the DNA samples collected after Madeleine's disappearance are held.
British police told bosses at Portugal's Institute of Legal Medicine and Forensic Sciences they wanted to retest some of the samples to try to crack the mystery of Madeleine's disappearance.
They are yet to send a sixth international letter of request which mother-of-four Mrs Sequeira will have to authorise before Met Police forensics experts are allowed access to the lab or given permission to take samples to Britain to analyse them.
The forensic material includes hairs and pieces of the curtains that hung in apartment 5A.
It emerged late last month nearly 100 strands of hair tested during the original Madeleine McCann investigation were never DNA-matched.
The Operation Grange inquiry is running in parallel with a new Portuguese probe, reopened in May more than five years after being shelved.
Scotland Yard detectives dug up waste ground and inspected sewers in Praia da Luz in June in a grim search for her body.
One of the suspects questioned in July was a former Ocean Club worker and another a 51-year-old schizophrenic drug addict. They both denied any involvement in Madeleine's disappearance.
Portuguese police believe Madeleine was snatched by a foreigner no longer living in Portugal.
However they have still not formally ruled out the involvement of junkie burglar Euclides Monteiro, whose widow they questioned last year, despite the fact DNA tests have put him in the clear.
Last month it emerged the cost of the British police search for Madeleine will soon top £10million double the original amount estimated by the Home Office when the force was called in by David Cameron in 2011.
The Home Office has defending the rising cost of the probe, insisting: 'The Government believes it is right that it does all it can to support the search for Madeleine McCann.'
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2828316/Madeleine-McCann-investigators-questioning-Britons-new-official-suspects-girl-s-disappearance-Portugal.html
Reading the leaked information in the press regarding the people already questioned and those about to be questioned leads to the heart breaking conclusion that the initial Portuguese inquiry missed basic investigative opportunities available at the time.
By doing so the opportunity to find out what happened to Madeleine was missed; and worse, the opportunity to recover her was missed.
In
Panorama: Mystery of Madeleine McCann: November 19/2007 the crime reporter for the Diaro de Noticias, Jose Manuel Oliveira told Richard Bilton that as early as two days after Madeleine’s disappearance Portuguese Journalists were being briefed by the Portuguese police that the McCanns were suspected from the word go because they did not believe them or their friends.
I think that proves they took their eye off the ball and pursued that line of inquiry ... to the exclusion of all others ... or these people would have been fully investigated and ruled in or out of involvement in 2007.
Obviously the information about phone calls between the people SY wish to speak to was available in 2007. From there it would have been easy to find out who knew who, who worked in the OC and who had criminal convictions.
There is something far wrong that these interviews are only taking place now and as a result of SY involvement when the information that led to this point was already available in 2007.
