Madeleine McCann: Probe into Belgian sighting

Aug 7 2008

Kate and Gerry McCann’s private detectives were today pursuing newly revealed leads pointing to a possible Belgian link to their daughter Madeleine’s disappearance.

A series of potential sightings of the missing girl in Belgium emerged in the official police files released this week.

The McCanns’ investigators are also looking into a Scotland Yard report suggesting the child may have been snatched to order for a Belgian paedophile ring, despite a warning that the intelligence is “flawed”.

A woman reported seeing a young girl who looked “very much” like Madeleine with an Eastern European-looking couple on a tram in Brussels 12 days after she vanished, the files reveal.

Line Compere, 31, told Belgian police she saw the blonde-haired, blue-eyed child on the number 18 tram heading towards the main Midi train station on the morning of May 15 last year.

Her suspicions were aroused because the man and woman with the youngster did not look like her, appeared to be speaking a different language from her and did not seem to know her well.

At that point she had never seen a photograph of Madeleine but later that day she was shown a picture of the missing girl.

Ms Compere told police in interview: “When I saw the photo in question, it immediately jumped out to me that there was a big resemblance to the little girl on the tram.”

The report was passed on to the Portuguese police but it is unclear what action was taken to follow it up.

Other possible sightings of Madeleine in Belgium revealed in the police files:

• A British traveller contacted police after seeing a child asleep on a train from Brussels to Antwerp on May 27 last year and concluding she could have been drugged.

•  A girl looking strikingly like Madeleine was spotted in a shop in Mouscron, near the French border, accompanied by an English-speaking woman on June 2 last year.

The Scotland Yard paedophile ring tip-off was contained in an e-mail from the Metropolitan Police’s CO14 clubs and vice unit sent to Leicestershire Police and forwarded to Portuguese detectives.

An informant claimed a photograph was taken of Madeleine on holiday in Portugal and passed to a “purchaser” in Belgium days before she vanished.

Sources cautioned today that the information was second or even third-hand and impossible to corroborate with forces in the UK or abroad.

“The information certainly wasn’t first-hand. We did everything possible with it, there was nowhere else we could go,” a source said.

The intelligence is believed to have been one of dozens of similar reports passed to the unit after Madeleine’s disappearance.

Portuguese police pursued the lead, requesting assistance from Belgium via Interpol, but only limited information was available and the trail ran cold.

The possibility that Madeleine was abducted and taken to Belgium was raised last summer.

Police investigated a sighting of a girl who resembled the missing child at a service station near the town of Tongeren on Dutch border last August.

Less than 100 miles from the Belgian border is Amsterdam, where two possible sightings of Madeleine were reported shortly after she vanished.

In early May last year shop assistant Anna Stam, 41, spoke to a little girl called “Maddy” who said she had been taken from her mother while on holiday.

And Hannie Wiechmann, 71, called police after seeing a young child she believed to be the missing girl in Amsterdam in the second week of May last year.

The McCanns’ lawyers are now sifting through the massive police dossier of thousands of pages of evidence looking for credible clues that the couple’s private investigators can pursue.

Family spokesman Clarence Mitchell refused to comment on the detectives’ specific movements, but confirmed that the Belgian and Dutch lines were being pursued.

He said: “If there is a lead that is credible and worth looking into, private detectives in that country in the neighbourhood will be fired up very quickly to move on it, and if necessary other teams from the UK or other countries that are involved will be moved in to support the local agencies who are ’in country’.

“For example, detectives from Holland will be speaking to Anna Stam within the next two to three days.

“We don’t move immediately, they have to check out the credibility and whether or not there are other factors involved, for example if they are attention-seeking, or have problems.

“They check out everything before pinning a sighting to our masthead.”

Belgium has been rocked by several appalling paedophile cases, including that of unemployed electrician Marc Dutroux.

The 47-year-old was jailed for life four years ago after being convicted of kidnapping, raping and murdering young girls.

In one interview Dutroux claimed he was part of a wider paedophile ring but police did not want to pursue it.

Madeleine was nearly four when she vanished from her family’s holiday flat in the Algarve resort of Praia da Luz on May 3 last year.

On July 21 Portuguese prosecutors announced they were shelving the case, although it can be reopened if credible new evidence comes to light.

At the same time the McCanns and Algarve resident Robert Murat were told they were no longer “arguidos”, or formal suspects, in the investigation.