British police searching for missing Madeleine McCann are said to be on their way back to Portugal for key “make-or-break” interviews that could crack the seven-year mystery.
According to the Daily Mirror, officers from Operation Grange have zoned in on seven suspects – three of which will be interviewed for a second time.
The move follows “weeks of tense negotiations” says the Mirror, quoting a source who claims: “This is far from a scatter-gun approach. The detectives are acutely aware there is a finite amount of money for the investigation and that they need results”.
Operation Grange – set up three years ago – is believed to have already spent over £6 million in its painstaking review of the original police files into three-year-old Madeleine’s disappearance from a holiday apartment in Praia da Luz in May, 2007.
Earlier this summer, dozens of uniformed officers descended on the village to dig in three areas where they believed clues to the child’s fate could still exist. The high-profile exercise was said to have revealed “nothing of interest”.
As the Mirror admits in its latest story: “Portuguese sources have described the Met probe, which has so far cost UK taxpayers more than £6million, as a senseless waste of time”.
The Mirror’s source also demonstrates ambiguity by tempering “this is not a scatter-gun approach” with “it is hoped they (the officers) are on the right track”.
For now, what seems certain is that of the four potential suspects interviewed by the Met in Faro in July, Sergey Malinka, the Russian IT expert “is no longer under suspicion”.
That leaves a Portuguese taxi driver who used to work for the Ocean Club resort, a young beggar who was 16 when Madeleine went missing and a man suffering from schizophrenia – along with four new suspects which, the Mirror claims, have also been identified through analysis of mobile phone data.
“Thousands of pieces of evidence have been re-examined by the Scotland Yard team to get to this stage”, the Mirror quotes its source as telling the paper.
In July, when it became clear exactly which individuals the Met was zeroing in on, former PJ police investigator, writer and commentator Francisco Moita Flores suggested that British police “are not looking for mortal remains of the little girl, nor those who are guilty. They are simply looking for an excuse”.
Eyes now are on the Met’s imminent return which, according to the Mirror, will go ahead next month.
Maddie cops “set to return to Portugal in make-or-break moment”
