Madeleine McCann's parents probe new Belgian sightings

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

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