The Sun newspaper reports
that he took them on a short journey to a hotel
where the group transferred to a jeep with foreign
number plates.
Mr Cardoso claimed
the girl in the back of his taxi at 8.10pm on May 3
was wearing pink pyjamas and had a distinctive mark
in her eye.
He said he later
recognised one of the men as Robert Murat after
watching a television programme.
The claims have
shocked Madeleine's parents, Kate and Gerry McCann,
who have rejected them for being incompatible with
the known chain of events that night.
Murat was made an
official suspect, or arguido, two weeks after the
little girl disappeared but has always denied any
involvement in the case.
Mr Cardoso said he
drove the group in silence for about two miles from
the Hotel Apolo in Vila Real de Santo Antonio near
Faro, with the man who he believed to be Murat sat
beside him in the front passenger seat.
He claimed the
girl he thought was Madeleine was awake but said
nothing during the trip and stared straight ahead.
He told the Sun:
"I noticed her eye because my son was born with a
defect much the same. I saw her kind of twist her
chin a few times in my rear-view mirror.
"I remember she
was in pink pyjamas and wondered why they hadn't
dressed her."
He described the
adults as casually dressed and the woman as a slim
blonde.
Mr Cardoso said he
had informed the police of the apparent encounter
but as well as Metodo 3, the private detective
agency hired by the McCanns.
But the McCanns
spokesman Clarence Mitchell told the newspaper: "We
are dismissing this primarily because the timings
are entirely wrong."
