Madeleine McCann disappearance: Portuguese police to launch new search operation

The operation will focus on finding traces of the presumed dead McCann who disappeared while on vacation in 2007 when she was 3-years old.

Kate and Gerry McCann are seen in front of a computer generated image of how their missing daughter Madeleine might look now, during a news conference in London on 2 May 2012. | File Photo | Andrew Winning | Reuters

Lisbon: Portuguese police are to search again an area around Praia da Luz, the civil parish in the southern Algarve region where British three-year-old Madeleine McCann disappeared in 2007, CNN Portugal reported on Monday.

The network said the search starting on Tuesday had been requested by German authorities, who in 2022 formally identified German national Christian Brueckner as an official suspect in McCann’s disappearance.

Portugal’s investigative Judicial Police declined to comment.

German police said in June 2020 that McCann was assumed dead and that Brueckner was likely responsible. Brueckner has denied any involvement and has not been charged with any crime related to the case.

The search for traces of the child’s body will focus on an area between Praia da Luz and one of the houses where Brueckner lived when McCann disappeared 18 years ago.

The last search for McCann was carried out in May 2023, when the police combed an inland reservoir in the Algarve but did not find anything.

(Reporting by Sergio Goncalves, editing by Ed Osmond)

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