Maddie detectives fly to Portugal for talks: Officers urge counterparts to investigate leads involving three burglars
EXCLUSIVE: Scotland Yard officers hold three-hour meeting in city of Faro
They want Portuguese counterparts to investigate three burglars
Phone analysis shows they were 'very close' to the McCann's apartment
Madeleine McCann vanished from holiday flat almost seven years ago
By NICK FAGGE
PUBLISHED: 22:01 GMT, 28 January 2014 | UPDATED: 22:01 GMT, 28 January 2014
Scotland Yard detectives investigating the disappearance of Madeleine McCann have held an important meeting with Portuguese counterparts that they hope will lead to a major breakthrough in the case.
Four Met Police officers met with senior members of Portugal’s detective squad, the Policia Judiciaria (PJ), in Faro, to urge them to carrying out inquiries identified by the British investigation known as Operation Grange.
The detectives had arrived in the Algarve on Monday afternoon and held a three-hour meeting, starting at 10am today.
The Met officers held talks with the head of the PJ in Faro, Mota Carmo, and Ana Paula-Rita, the coordinator for the PJ office in Portimao, whose jurisdiction covers Praia da Luz, in the hope of gathering new evidence.
British police want to interview three burglars who have been identified as prime suspects in the disappearance of Madeleine McCann in May 2007.
Analysis of mobile phone data suggests the men were ‘very close’ to the holiday apartment in Praia da Luz when the three-year-old vanished.
It also indicates they made an unusually high number of calls to each other in the hours that followed her abduction in 2007.
A source close to the PJ told the Daily Mail: ‘The British police came to Faro for a meeting at 10am.
‘They talked for about three hours and then went for lunch.
‘The British are desperate to interview three burglars that were in Praia da Luz at the time of Madeleine’s disappearance.
‘But they are also urging the Portuguese authorities find new evidence against the burglary suspects that could lead to arrests.’
Portugal’s Public Prosecutor Jose Magalhaes e Menezes has said his office will not be ‘an obstacle to solving the Madeleine case’.
The Portuguese authorities reopened their own investigation into the youngster’s disappearance in October last year.
Madeleine, who was then nearly four, disappeared from her family’s holiday apartment in Praia da Luz in the Algarve on May 3, 2007, as her parents dined at a nearby restaurant with friends.
It is now known that between January and May 2007 there had been a four-fold increase in the number of burglaries in the area.
Police said in October last year that in the 17 days before she disappeared there was one burglary and one attempted burglary in the block where the McCann family were staying.
