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| George Brooks / Burke |
29 November 2007
The Daily Express
Nick Fagge in Praia da Luz
Kate and Gerry McCann are behind a deliberate campaign of misinformation about the disappearance of their daughter, it was claimed yesterday.
In a thinly veiled attack on the couple and their private investigators, a high-ranking police source in Portugal rubbished recent "sightings" of Madeleine and accused them of trying to suppress the truth about events on May 3.
"Someone is trying to deviate attention about what really happened that night, " says the source in Portuguese daily newspaper 24 Horas yesterday.
It is claimed that detectives have spent weeks pouring over media reports of worldwide sightings, including Morocco and Bosnia.
And the report says the authorities now believe details of the sightings have been leaked to the British press by agents working on behalf of the McCanns to discredit the official police investigation. The source told 24 Horas:
"We have analysed all the information reaching the public. None of the reports indicating sightings of the McCanns' daughter have been confirmed. "And there's also someone who wants to bring down an investigation that has been carried out honestly and rigorously."The source close to the Policia Judiciaria (PJ) investigation countered claims that the Portuguese police are determined to "nail" the McCanns for their daughter's disappearance. He said:
"The PJ doesn't want an innocent person to be taken prisoner. It's just trying to find out the truth. And that's the direction it will continue working in."The latest "sighting" is from a British expat who says he saw Madeleine being dragged towards a marina by a "very suspicious" couple eight hours after she vanished.
Businessman George Burke says he saw a small girl resembling Madeleine being hauled along by a "vicious-looking" man and woman as he drove past Lagos marina – five miles from Praia da Luz – in the early morning of May 4.
Last week it emerged that a Portuguese lorry driver told police he saw a girl being handed over by a blonde woman to a man in the town of Silves on May 5.
Private investigators believe this was the moment the four year old was passed from her original kidnapper to a paedophile gang who whisked her to Morocco.
The trucker is said to have identified Michaela Walczuch, the lover of official suspect Robert Murat, as the blonde woman handing over the youngster on the country road.
Spanish tourist Isabel Gonzalez has claimed she saw Jehovah's Witness Walczuch, 32, in Morocco in June, just moments after she noticed a little blonde girl whom she is convinced was Madeleine. And a British nanny has identified expat property developer Murat, 34, as the man she saw trying to snatch a baby from the same holiday apartment that the McCanns booked six months later.
Murat and Walczuch both deny any involvement in Madeleine's disappearance. And Francisco Pagarete, Murat's lawyer, has accused the McCanns of trying to frame his client and his friends.
The official Portuguese police investigation continues to focus on the theory that Madeleine died in the apartment as the result of an accident, and that the McCanns hid the body and recruited friends into covering their tracks.
Kate and Gerry McCann, both 39, from Rothley, Leicestershire, vigorously deny being involved in their daughter's disappearance.
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