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| Dogs prompted McCanns police move | Dogs prompted McCanns police move |
| (about 1 hour later) | |
| Kate and Gerry McCann were declared suspects in their daughter Madeleine's disappearance because of the work of sniffer dogs, a police report says. | Kate and Gerry McCann were declared suspects in their daughter Madeleine's disappearance because of the work of sniffer dogs, a police report says. |
| The BBC has seen the final Portuguese police report into her disappearance, the day after the case was shelved. | The BBC has seen the final Portuguese police report into her disappearance, the day after the case was shelved. |
| The report says police were "obliged" to make Mrs McCann, of Rothley, Leics, a suspect on the "merest possibility she had been in contact with a corpse". | The report says police were "obliged" to make Mrs McCann, of Rothley, Leics, a suspect on the "merest possibility she had been in contact with a corpse". |
| The couple and Briton Robert Murat are no longer formal suspects in the case. | |
| Madeleine disappeared on a family holiday in Praia da Luz, in the Algarve, on 3 May 2007, aged three. | |
| The report for prosecutors says it was the reactions of the British-based sniffer dogs, one trained to find human blood, the other the presence of a corpse, which led to police declaring the couple as formal suspects last September. | The report for prosecutors says it was the reactions of the British-based sniffer dogs, one trained to find human blood, the other the presence of a corpse, which led to police declaring the couple as formal suspects last September. |
| Samples analysed | Samples analysed |
| The dogs had reacted at various points in the McCanns' holiday apartment, in a car they hired several weeks after her disappearance and on two items of Mrs McCann's clothing. | |
| An initial report from a British-based laboratory that analysed samples from these sites said they contained Madeleine's DNA, but this opinion was later revised. | |
| Regarding Mr Murat, the first person to be declared arguido in the case, suspicions "initially" arose when a British journalist reported him acting strangely, the report says. | |
| Kate McCann spoke on Monday of her despair at having been a suspect in the case | |
| This contradicts what police told media, including the BBC, at the time, which was that detectives had already had their eye on him. | |
| The document confirms earlier media reports that a woman staying upstairs from the McCanns recalled hearing a child crying for over an hour in the family's apartment, on the eve of Madeleine's disappearance. | |
| The report also says a reconstruction of the night Madeleine disappeared - when her parents were eating at a nearby restaurant with friends - could have established whether the timeline was consistent with abduction by a stranger, as police had difficulty doing this on the basis of the group's testimony. | |
| The reconstruction did not take place after some of the McCanns' seven holiday companions declined to take part. | |
| 'Defensive tone' | |
| The 57-page final report, complemented by appendices detailing police actions and findings, at times takes a defensive tone. | |
| And it is only a portion of the mass of documentation relating to the case. | |
| It stresses the thousands of man-hours put in by over 100 detectives from early on in the investigation, working round the clock. | |
| It reveals the hundreds of house searches carried out and the thousands of leads phoned in by the public that they had to sift through, most of which it says were found not to be credible. | |
| The Portuguese authorities have also dismissed suggestions that they had been incompetent or that they were washing their hands of the case. | |
| Robert Murat denies any involvement in Madeleine's disappearance | |
| In written answers to questions put by the BBC, the attorney general's office said police had taken all steps that "any good police force in the world would and will continue to take them until it can obtain a satisfactory result." | |
| The investigation, it said, "will always remain open and all action taken that proves necessary to find out what really happened". | |
| It cited as examples of new facts that could prompt the files to be reopened "a confession, a telephone conversation [or] a new credible witness". | |
| The Portuguese police's national director, José Maria Almeida Rodrigues, speaking on Portuguese radio, said his detectives would "follow all leads" that might come up in the case but "with restraint and discretion". | |
| The McCann family spokesman, Clarence Mitchell, said: "Gerry and Kate's lawyers in Portugal will be applying formally for access to the complete file and they will be analysing everything in it in their own time." | The McCann family spokesman, Clarence Mitchell, said: "Gerry and Kate's lawyers in Portugal will be applying formally for access to the complete file and they will be analysing everything in it in their own time." |