Lisbon: Portuguese police are considering reopening the inquiry into the 2007 disappearance of British girl Madeleine McCann from a beach resort in the country, a local newspaper reported on Thursday.
“The possibility of reopening the inquiry is being considered, but the public prosecutor will make the final decision,” the Correio da Manha said, without citing a source.
The newspaper said police sent a team to review the case in the northern city of Porto in March last year with a view to reopening the investigation, with a focus on the possibility of a kidnapping by an organised paedophile network.
Police declined to comment when contacted by AFP.
Madeleine vanished from the holiday apartment where her parents were staying in the resort of Praia da Luz just days before her fourth birthday in May 2007, while they were dining at a nearby tapas bar.
The discovery last week of a four-year-old blonde girl in a Roma camp in Greece has resurrected the issue of child kidnapping in Europe once again, and had “given hope” to Madeleine’s parents, their spokesman said.
Portuguese authorities closed their investigation into Madeleine’s disappearance in 2008, but Scotland Yard spent two years reviewing it at the British government’s request and opened their own probe in July this year.
British detectives investigating the case last week published two new electronic images of a man they want to contact in a major new appeal also shown in Germany and the Netherlands.
