Madeleine McCann ’spotted In Morocco’

Holidaymakers have reported many sightings of Madeleine McCann in Morocco after an appeal by private investigators hunting for the missing girl and the release of a description of her alleged abductor.

The investigators are reported to be particularly interested in three calls, which gave details of a girl matching Madeleine’s description with a middle-class Moroccan woman aged about 60.

Gerry McCann has said for the first time that he is convinced that a friend saw the abductor taking his daughter from their Algarve holiday apartment in Praia da Luz on May 3. A sketch of a man allegedly seen walking away from the Ocean Club resort was released by the private investigators last week.

Mr McCann wrote on his internet blog this weekend: “We believe this child was Madeleine. We hope that this picture may jog someone’s memory who may have seen this man in the Praia da Luz area on the night or days before Madeleine was abducted.

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“Someone else may be aware of a man matching this description who has behaved suspiciously at any time since the beginning of May.” The man is 35-40 years old, approximately 5’8”-5’10” (1.72-1.78m), Caucasian with southern European/Mediterranean appearance, slim build with dark, collar length hair.

The friend who claims to have seen the abductor has said that she is still haunted by the image of him striding away from the McCann’s ground-floor apartment carrying a girl in the pink and white pyjamas that Madeleine wore that night. Jane Tanner, 36, from Exeter, has insisted that she told Portuguese police immediately of the sighting and provided a description to police at 3am on the night of her disappearance.

However, Carlos Anjos President, of the Judicial Police Inspector’s Union, said that the Polícia Judiciária had not approved the release of the description and dismissed the picture as “cartoon”.

Mr McCann said the family had hired the Barcelona-based Metoda 3 agency to help in the hunt for his daughter because “we believe Madeleine is most likely to be in the Iberian Peninsula or North Africa”. A high-speed ferry from Spain to northern Morocco is a five-hour drive from Praia da Luz.

A source close the investigators said they had received 275 calls with information in the first three days on an anonymous telephone helpline on +34.902.300.213. Many of the calls related to Morocco, which the McCanns had visisted in June as part of a campaign to promote the search for their daughter.

However, senior Moroccan police sources have said that many young girls in the north of the country closest to Europe have blonde hair and features similar to those of Madeleine. They have insisted it would extremely unlikely that a strange girl speaking a foreign language would be seen in public without the police being tipped off by neighbours.

A previous sighting quickly turned out to be the daughter of a Moroccan peasant family, which had also travelled to a town where another two other sightings of Madeleine had occurred.

Meanwhile, Mr McCann and his wife, Kate, both 39, have been told they will have to wait nearly a year to discover why they had been made official suspects in their daughter’s disappearance.

The couple, from Rothley, Leicestershire, had hoped to be given the details of the police case against them on November 14, when new Portuguese laws mean another suspect in the case, Robert Murat, can ask for the evidence against him.

But it was reported yesterday that police have applied to the investigating judge to have the deadline extended because they are still awaiting for further evidence including the results of tests being carried out by the Forensic Science Service in Birmingham.

Detectives are also waiting to reinterview at least four of the seven people, including Ms Tanner, who were dining with Mr and Mrs McCann when Madeleine disappeared just six days before her fourth birthday. It has also been reported that police have still not seen couple’s potentially crucial mobile phone records from the night of May 3.

A judicial source quoted in the 24 Horas newspaper said: “The Policia Judiciaria and Public Prosecution Service have made all the necessary requests. But the fact they’re dealing with foreign citizens requires the execution of tasks they’re not involved in.”

Judge Pedro Daniel dos Anjos Frias has been asked to grant the case “special complexity” status, which means the suspects will not learn exactly what they are accused of until May at the earliest, and possibly much later.

The McCanns had hope to have their status as “arguidos” (official suspects) lifted as soon as possible so that Portuguese officers return to concentrate on searching for their daughter.

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