Joana_cipriano

Madeleine McCann: New lead.

A GIRL who vanished just a few miles from where Madeleine McCann disappeared was sold to child traffickers, a Portuguese court will be told next week.

Joana Cipriano was just eight when she vanished on September 12, 2004, from the village of Figueira, near Portimao in the Algarve.

Her mother Leonor and uncle Joao Cipriano were jailed for 16 years for her murder. But Leonor, who is fighting to overturn her conviction, will put her case to a Portuguese court this week

Her sensational allegations raise the possibility that a child smuggling ring was active in the area and could have also snatched Madeleine from her apartment in Praia da Luz on May 2007.

Leonor’s partner Antonio Silva says Joao Cipriano confessed in May last year that he was solely responsible for Joana’s disappearance because he wanted to sell her to raise money to fund his addiction to hard drugs.

Mr Silva’s statement, seen by the Sunday Express, says : “The police always refused to investigate the many rumours in ­Figueira that criminals would be tempted to buy the girl. ”

British criminologist and child protection expert Mark Williams-Thomas called for Joana’s case to be reopened and for an investigation to see if it was linked to Madeleine’s disappearance.