Madeleine McCann's parents probe new Belgian sightings

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

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“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.”

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.