Lisbon, (BLAZETRENDS).- The authorities decided to extend for one more day, until this Thursday, the search operation deployed in a reservoir in the Algarve (south of Portugal) for the disappearance of the British girl Madeleine McCann sixteen years ago.
A heavy rainstorm forced an early suspension of the searches in the Arade dam on Tuesday afternoon, so it was decided to extend the operation one more day than initially planned, until Thursday, according to local media reports.
Joint search with British and German troops
The Portuguese Police, accompanied by British and German troops, this Wednesday resumed the search tasks in Arade, located about 50 kilometers from Praia da Luz, where the girl was kidnapped 16 years ago.
The reservoir was a place frequented by the main suspect in the case, the German Christian Brueckner.
So far, no information has been released about possible progress in the investigation and sources from the Portuguese Judicial Police told Efe that they will not disclose anything about the operation until there is something new.
Collection of material
The images taken in the area during these two days suggest that, during the first day, the agents gathered material collected in bags for analysis after combing the area with dogs, georadar and drones.
This second day was dedicated above all to clearing the land, with brushcutters and chainsaws, in the most difficult areas for agents to access.
A German, the main suspect
The Arade reservoir was Brueckner’s “little paradise”, as he himself described the place, and he spent long periods there with his motorhome.
The suspect also had images of this area on his computer, according to local media, which indicate that the tip of an informant led the German authorities to request search work in the reservoir.
The area was already searched in 2008 by private investigators without success but, experts in forensic medicine agreed today, advances in technology in recent years are essential to solve the case if evidence of the disappearance of the girl is finally found.
Madeleine was three years old when she disappeared – on May 3, 2007 – from the room where she slept with her little brothers in a tourist complex in Praia da Luz.
After years of investigation, the case took a turn in 2020 and the German Christian Brueckner, imprisoned in his country for other crimes, became the main suspect.
The German Prosecutor’s Office in Braunschweig works with the theory that Madeleine died at the hands of Brueckner, who has a long history of crimes for sexual abuse and pedophilia, some of them in Portugal.