Madeleine McCann's parents probe new Belgian sightings

Aug 8 2008 By Sam Marsden and Chris Greenwood, Daily Post correspondents

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PRIVATE detectives hired by Liverpool-born Kate McCann and her husband Gerry were last night 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.