Portuguese police apologise to Madeleine McCann’s parents 16 years after her disappearance

Portuguese police have apologised to Madeleine McCann’s parents over their handling of the investigation into the three-year-old’s disappearance 16 years ago.

Madeleine vanished from a holiday complex in the Algarve, Portugal, in May 2007, sparking a long-running hunt for the missing toddler.

According to BBC Panorama, senior Portuguese Police officers flew from Lisbon to London to meet and apologised to Gerry McCann earlier this year.

The delegation reportedly said the initial police investigation was not handled properly and officers did not properly appreciate the McCanns’ position as foreigners in an environment they did not understand as they apologised for how detectives treated the family.

Mr McCann and his wife Kate McCann were made designated suspects in the Portuguese investigation in 2007.

They were questioned by detectives, who believed they had abducted Madeleine before concealing her body.

Mrs McCann later said she was offered a deal to admit covering up her daughter’s death in exchange for a shorter sentence.

That suspect – or “arguido” status was eventually lifted and the investigation was shelved in 2008, but the couple remained under suspicion in Portugal for years.

That status was eventually lifted and the investigation was shelved in 2008, but the couple remained under suspicion in Portugal for years.

In 2012, Scotland Yard detectives said they believed Madeleine could still be alive, released an age-progression picture of how she might look as a nine-year-old, and called on the Portuguese authorities to reopen the case, but Portuguese police said they had found no new material.

Months after Scotland Yard launched its own investigation, Operation Grange, into Madeleine’s disappearance in 2013, Portuguese police confirmed that a review of their original inquiry had uncovered new lines of inquiry, and they reopened the case.

The officers also gave their support to the German authorities who believe their prime suspect, 46-year-old German national Christian Brueckner, a convicted sex offender, kidnapped and murdered the youngster.

Hans Christian Wolters, one of the German prosecutors on the case, told the BBC the apology is “a good sign”, adding: “It shows that, in Portugal, there’s development in the McCann case.”

Brueckner is in prison in Germany for the rape of a woman in Praia da Luz in 2005, and is suspected of further rapes and child sexual abuse committed in the area between 2000 and 2017.

He has reportedly denied any involvement in Madeleine’s disappearance.