http://theportugalnews.com/news/madeleine-two-british-expats-set-to-be-declared-suspects/33200Madeleine – Two British expats set to be declared suspectsby Brendan de Beer, in News · 13-11-2014 17:56:00 · 0 Comments Sources close to the investigation involving the search for missing British toddler Madeleine McCann have this week told The Portugal News
two British expats are set to be declared formal suspects or arguidos. Another two Britons will be called in as witnesses.
http://theportugalnews.com/uploads/news/page6_22.jpg Dates for questioning have been confirmed as being from November 24 to 28 at the PJ police headquarters in Faro.
Sources said the questioning of suspects was unlikely to stretch beyond this period.
The Portugal News revealed last week (6 November) that the Metropolitan Police were keen to speak to a number of British expats in the Algarve.
Any new requests will have to come in the form of a new international letter of request.
Sources said there are 11 people of interest, of which seven will be declared arguidos, and four will be heard as witnesses.
There are two Britons in each of these groups.
The two British witnesses are a couple (a man and a woman), but the
two British suspects are said to be not related in any way and are both men.The seven suspects do not include any of the four arguidos, all of whom are Portuguese nationals, questioned over the summer.
The Brits were all resident in Portugal at the time of Madeleine’s disappearance and have remained here since, sources said.
The theory that Madeleine was abducted by someone passing through, remains a scenario which Portuguese police continue to believe to be among the most probable.
Portuguese police had earlier this summer ruled out Cape Verdean national Euclides Monteiro, who died in 2009, of any involvement in Madeleine’s disappearance.
Police sources confirmed that Monteiro had been the primary reason behind the case’s reopening here in Portugal last October, but subsequent
investigations removed any suspicion over Monteiro.
The news of the exact dates for the questioning of new
suspects comes after the new Public Prosecutor in Portimão, Inês Sequeira, gave the green light to a fifth international Letter of Request received from British authorities
in August.
Police sources here meanwhile said that they had not yet received an official request from Scotland Yard to sit in on interrogations, but said this feature of the investigation was a mere formality.
British girl Madeleine McCann went missing from
an apartment in the Ocean Club resort, Praia da Luz in May 2007, then aged three, sparking an unprecedented
international hunt which has lost little impetus in the more than seven years since her
disappearance.