Lusa’s Luís Forra remains in serious condition
With the latest high-profile police searches for Madeleine McCann – 18 years after the toddler disappeared while on holiday with her parents in Praia da Luz – now over, and apparently delivering no breakthroughs, reports have revealed that a veteran photojournalist suffered a stroke trying to get a good shot of excavation work being undertaken.
Luís Forra, 65, is a long-time photographer for Lusa. He was among the press packed amassed in the Atalaia area above Lagos, but thwarted by police cordons from getting sufficiently close to the place where excavations were ongoing.
According to reports, Forra tried to find a way to get a ‘better photo’, ending up walking over a kilometre uphill.
“On a steep rise, he started to feel unwell”, writes Correio da Manhã, saying that two foreign reporters realised what was happening and immediately called for help.
“The problem is that the ambulance could not reach the spot”, says the paper. Thus Forra had to be transported by ‘other colleagues of his profession’ to Porto do Mós, where paramedics were waiting.
From there he was taken to Portimão Hospital and then airlifted to Faro, where he spent Thursday in intensive care, later being transferred to the hospital’s stroke unit.
According to CM, Forra’s condition is developing favourably, although it is still considered ‘serious’.
Meantime, Lusa confirms that these latest searches “appear to have ended empty handed” as many predicted they would. Euronews conducted an interview with the first lead detective in the search for Madeleine who repeated his belief that the whole exercise was part of a ‘stitch up’ to try and pin everything on Christian Brückner, even though there is no hard evidence that he had anything to do with any of it.
One curious aspect of the searches was that they persisted in describing Brückner as the ‘principal suspect’ in the disappearance of Madeleine McCann. Legal sources in Portugal have stressed that he is the final suspect, due to the statute of limitations in this country on crimes that carry a sentence of more than 10 years. There can be no further suspects, regardless of any future information, albeit police have until November 3, 2029 to find the evidence they would need to finally charge Christian Brückner. ND
