crime
The Straws in the Maddie Case – New Search
Police search teams return to an operational tent in Barragem do Arade, Portugal. photo
© Joao Matos/AP/dpa
The new search in the Maddie case is causing a stir – and raising expectations 16 years after Madeleine McCann’s disappearance. What are the chances that the uncertainty will end?
The renowned Portuguese newspaper “Público” spoke of a “media circus”. The new search operation in the case of little Madeleine McCann, who disappeared without a trace in southern Portugal 16 years ago, is causing a stir beyond the borders of Europe.
Dozens of journalists and cameramen from all over the world, including a team from the Brazilian TV station RecordTV, gathered at the Arade reservoir near the municipality of Silves on Wednesday. This shows that the surprising operation awakens new hopes for an end to the uncertainty that must torment the British girl’s parents and siblings in particular.
Are there really new, promising indications?
Are the expectations perhaps too high, as some experts say? André Inácio, among others, is skeptical. The Portuguese police inspector said in an interview with CNN Portugal that it is not very likely that after more than a decade anything useful could be found on or in the reservoir, “even if there really is something down there”. Spanish police officer José Ángel Sánchez, a seasoned missing persons and kidnappings officer, made a similar statement. “I think they’re looking for biological remains, but it’s very difficult for the dogs to track them down after so many years,” he told RTVE on Wednesday.
The first major search operation in the Maddie case after three years came about at the request of the German Federal Criminal Police Office (BKA). The public prosecutor’s office in Braunschweig is investigating the case against a German with a criminal record. It is believed that 46-year-old Christian B., who was in Portugal at the time of the girl’s disappearance and who is currently behind bars for a sex crime, kidnapped and murdered the girl. But a body has not yet been found.
Are the German investigators clinging to straws, or are there actually new, promising clues? The spokesman for the public prosecutor’s office in Braunschweig, Hans Christian Wolters, told the German Press Agency that the action was based on “recent developments”.
Genetic forensics have made great strides
This could also be interpreted to mean that there may not be any new evidence, but there are better technological means to find new evidence and perhaps even body remains in the Algarve. That’s what more optimistic experts like the former inspector of the Portuguese criminal police, Francisco Chagas, think. The police now have resources “that they didn’t have 16 years ago, but even four or five years ago,” Chagas told CNN Portugal. Great progress has been made in the fields of genetic forensics and satellite observation, for example.
“Let’s pretend that the blanket that the little girl was wrapped in was buried there. Sixteen years isn’t enough time for it to completely turn to dust,” Chagas explained. “And even if it has turned to dust, it is always a different dust than that of the earth itself. Forensic analysis can link these traces to the fall.”
Madeleine’s parents should be looking forward to the search. Kate and Gerry McCann had left Madeleine, then just four, and her two younger siblings at the apartment on that fateful day, May 3, 2007, while they were having dinner with friends at a nearby restaurant. 50 kilometers northeast of the holiday resort, namely at the Arade reservoir, which the German suspect often visited in 2007, according to the media, new hopes are now resting on certainty.
The search was called off early on the first day at around 6 p.m. due to bad weather. So far, soil samples have primarily been collected for later analysis, the state TV broadcaster RTP and the state news agency Lusa in Portugal reported on Wednesday, citing participants in the campaign. TV pictures showed how partly hooded police officers combed the shore area of the reservoir on Wednesday, this time in better weather, partly with the help of sniffer dogs. Divers were also on duty on a rubber dinghy on the lake. According to official information, officials from Portugal, Germany and Great Britain are taking part in the action. The search is expected to continue at least until Thursday.