The Scotland Yard team that is responsible for the British investigation to the disappearance of Madeleine McCann is at the Judiciary Police headquarters in Porto to «evaluate the current status» of the case - the SOL learned.

The British officers arrived today to Porto and are currently in a meeting with their counterparts from the Judiciary Police.

The reopening and re-analysis of the "Maddie" case - missing for nearly six years - was initiated 10 months ago, by the National Direction of the Judiciary Police who nominated a special team led by Helena Monteiro, a superior chief coordinator of criminal investigation.

The British authorities expect that eventual new data to be collected by the special PJ team, allow for the process to be formally reopened by the Attorney General's Office.

After an initial investigation led by Gonçalo Amaral, the case went, still at the PJ of Portimão, to Paulo Rebelo, the current director of the Judiciary Police in Lisbon, but without any practical solution.

Madeleine McCann disappeared on the night of May 9(sic) 2007 from an apartment in a tourist resort in Praia da Luz, in the Algarve, she has not been found so far. At the time, Maddie McCann was nine days away of her fourth birthday.

in: SOL, 21.01.2013

Note: In a story run by the daily newspaper Diário de Notícias, basically reporting on the above SOL article, the journalist alleges that an unnamed judiciary source said the meeting between the Judiciary Police in Porto and the Scotland Yard Officers is a "routine meeting". That does not in any way invalidate the strong possibility of a formal re-opening of the process by the Attorney General's Office. 

We all hope the process is formally re-opened, as opposed to a futile review costing over 3 million pounds so far (just in the UK), since there are still pending and critical issues, like the reconstruction of the events of the night when Madeleine disappeared that was requested by the Judiciary Police in 2007 and was never rendered feasible due to the clear refusal of pivotal witnesses or the hearing of witnesses, like the Smith family, that can help establish the truth about Madeleine's fate.

Trial that opposes McCanns and Gonçalo Amaral is suspended