Madeleine case: police will carry out new expertise on material collected

The German Federal Criminal Police Office (BKA) released a bulletin this Thursday (1st) on the resumption of investigations into the disappearance of Madeleine McCann. The report dealt with the material collected at the Arade Dam, in Portugal, last week, but pointed out that the investigations carried out so far were not conclusive.

“Several materials were seized during the investigations. But it is still not possible to say whether any of the items are really related to the Madeleine McCann case,” the BKA said in an official statement.

The British girl disappeared in Portugal, on May 3, 2007, and the story gained wide worldwide repercussions. In May, the investigations were resumed at the request of the German Justice. Since then, the BKA has worked in partnership with the British Scotland Yard and the Portuguese Judicial Police. The German office classified the partnership as “excellent and very constructive”.

The spokesman for the public prosecutor of Braunschweig, in the state of Lower Saxony, Hans Christian Wolters, reported that the collected material will continue to be evaluated “in the coming days and weeks”. The main focus of this new phase of investigations is the search for evidence linking the disappearance to the German Christian Brueckner, the main suspect in the disappearance of the girl.

“The investigations conducted here in Braunschweig against the suspect are likely to continue for a long time,” Wolters said.

On the last 22nd, the structure for the work on the Arade Dam, in the south of the country, was set up. The searches actually began on Tuesday (23) and mobilized heavy equipment and sniffer dogs.

Portuguese authorities ended the search last Thursday. The collected material was handed over to the German authorities on Friday, but the Judiciary Police informed the CNN that the dispatch would not interrupt the Portuguese investigations.

understand the case

Madeleine has been missing since May 3, 2007, when she disappeared from a resort apartment in the Algarve, Portugal, where she slept with her siblings while her parents dined a few meters away. She would turn 4 years old.

The case had great worldwide repercussions, mainly due to the huge publicity campaign carried out by the girl’s parents to try to discover her whereabouts. About 600 people were investigated and four were considered suspects but later acquitted.

In September 2007, Portuguese police classified Kate and Gerry McCann, Madeleine’s parents, as suspects in their daughter’s disappearance, after DNA was found in a car the family rented 25 days after reporting her disappearance. They denied all allegations and subsequently the case against them was dropped.

During all these years, there were several news about the whereabouts of Madeleine, both dead and alive, in different countries of the world. None of them, however, proved true. The most recent news on the subject occurred in February of this year, when the German Julia Faustyna, 21 years old, declared herself to be Madeleine McCann. The fact generated strong worldwide repercussions, but the police ruled out the possibility and the young woman’s family expressed themselves through a note, saying that she was always part of their family, and that there are photos and memories that prove it.