She calls for witnesses. German police announced on Wednesday that they are investigating a new suspect in the mysterious disappearance in 2007 of the British girl Madeleine McCann, known in France by the nickname of the little "Maddie".
"In connection with the disappearance of the young British girl Madeleine Beth McCann, then aged three years [...], the public prosecutor of Brunswick is investigating a German citizen of 43 years suspected of murder," announced federal police in a statement.
The suspect is said to be a sex offender who has been convicted several times, including for the sexual abuse of children. He is currently serving a long prison term "in another case," police said.
Hundreds of interrogations
This is a new twist in this extraordinary planetary fact where, more than 13 years after the facts and hundreds of interrogations and searches later, the mystery remained until now whole for the Portuguese police and Scotland Yard .
Madeleine McCann disappeared from her room on May 3, 2007, a few days before her fourth birthday, in the small seaside resort of Praia da Luz, in the south of Portugal, where she was staying on vacation with her family.
After 14 months of controversial investigations, marked in particular by the indictment of the girl's parents, Gerry and Kate McCann, and finally their laundering, then the dismissal of the inspector in charge of the investigation, the Portuguese police had classified the case in 2008 before reopening the case five years later.
Convinced that their daughter is alive
British police had opened their own investigation in July 2013, but Scotland Yard had since drastically reduced the number of investigators mobilized into the case. The parents were always convinced that their daughter had been kidnapped and could still be alive.
The German investigators worked in "close collaboration" with their British and Portuguese counterparts to find this new suspect.
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He would have lived regularly in the Algarve between 1995 and 2007, especially for several years in a house located between Lagos and Praia da Luz. He would have worked in the region, in particular in the restoration.
Other evidence suggests that he also made a living by "committing crimes, including burglaries in hotel complexes and holiday apartments", as well as drug trafficking, said German police.
