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Madeleine McCann’s parents believe that the new suspect could be “very significant”
Kate and Gerry McCann’s daughters were only three years old when she disappeared from their holiday apartment in the Praia da Luz resort, Portugal, on May 3, 2007, sparking an international hunt. He was never found, and no one has ever been charged with his disappearance.
On Wednesday, police in Britain and Germany identified a new suspect as a 43-year-old German man. The British authorities described the development as “a significant new path of investigation”, while German authorities revealed the suspect had previously been convicted of children who sexually abused.
Family spokesman Clarence Mitchell said Thursday that the British and German police appeals were “the first time in more than 13 years that I remember [police] focus on one individual “.
“Kate and Gerry feel that is potentially very significant,” Mitchell told BBC radio. “This is another important chapter in finding their daughter,” he added.
German Prosecutor’s Office Braunschweig, in the state of Lower-Saxony, said in a statement Wednesday that the suspect is currently serving a “long” prison sentence “for unrelated problems.” He is now under investigation for “possible murder” in connection with McCann, the office said.
On Thursday, State Attorney’s Office spokesman Hans Christian Wolters told CNN that his office considered McCann dead. Wolters said they would not elaborate on what evidence they had to support this because this was an ongoing investigation.
Wolters also explained that if the investigation leads to indictment and trial, the suspect will be tried in Germany, because murder is a criminal offense in Germany, as is the case in Portugal, independently where the crime was committed.
In the German crime settlement program “Aktenzeichen XY Unsolved” at the ZDF public broadcasting station, Wednesday night, Christian Hoppe of the German Federal Criminal Investigation Office said no bodies were found but “the investigation of the Federal Criminal Investigation Office instead led to the assumption that McCann had been the victim of a murder . “
In a statement sent to CNN on Wednesday, the missing girl’s parents thanked “the police forces involved for their ongoing efforts in searching for Madeleine.”
“All we want is to find it, uncover the truth and bring those responsible to justice. We will never give up hoping to find Madeleine alive but whatever the outcome, we need to know because we need to find peace.”
Mitchell, in his interview with BBC Radio 4, underlined that although the German police classified it as an investigation of a murder, the British police still treated it as a missing person case.
“A British citizen is still missing and British police are struggling to say there is no evidence at all that he has been harmed, is dead, or is still alive so they really keep an open mind about it,” he explained. .
The suspect had lived in the Algarve region of Portugal from 1995 to 2007, and also lived in a house in Praia de Luz, the resort town where McCann disappeared, according to the Braunschweig prosecutor’s office.
London Metropolitan Police on Wednesday also revealed details of two cars linked to the suspect around the time of the disappearance, and asked the public to step forward with information about them.
“The first vehicle is a typical VW T3 Westfalia campervan. This is a model of the early 1980s, with two-colored markings, a white upper body and yellow edges. The vehicle has a Portuguese registration plate,” a British statement said.
“The suspect has access to this van from at least April 2007 until around May 2007. It is used in and around the Praia da Luz area.”
“The second vehicle is the 1993 British Jaguar, XJR 6 model, with a German number plate and registered in Germany,” the statement added. “This car is believed to have been in Praia da Luz and its surroundings in 2006 and 2007. The car was originally registered under the name of the suspect. On May 4, 2007, the day after Madeleine’s disappearance, the car was re-registered to someone else in Germany.”
Asked if this might be another example of a real breakthrough that did not produce anything, Mitchell accepted that there were “lots of quotes, hints, rumors, assumptions” that “all was sad in vain”. “But as I said, in my memory about being involved in this case, the police were never as specific about someone as they were in this appeal,” he continued.
Kate and Gerry McCann did not do the interview because they wanted to remain focused on police requests for information around the telephone numbers and cars used by this new suspect, Mitchell added.
The Metropolitan Police began reviewing McCann’s disappearance in 2011, in a large-scale investigation known as Operation Grange which cost at least £ 11.75 million ($ 14.7) in June 2019.
“After the tenth anniversary, Met received information about a German man known to have been in and around Praia da Luz. We have worked with colleagues in Germany and Portugal and this man is a suspect in the disappearance of Madeleine,” Chief Detective Inspector Mark Cranwell said in a statement on Wednesday.
British authorities offer a £ 20,000 (around $ 25,000) prize for information that leads to penalties for those responsible.
Fred Pleitgen on Berlin CNN, Mia Alberti in Lisbon, Zamira Rahim, Max Ramsay, Milena Veselinovic and Isa Soares in London contributed to this report.
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