ROBERT MURAT today appeals for Scotland Yard to stage a filmed reconstruction of all the events surrounding the disappearance of Madeleine McCann.

Robert Murat was cleared as a suspect long ago (Pic: Sunday Express photographer Mark Kehoe

Marking the sixth anniversary of her abduction, the Algarve-based businessman says a 48-hour timeline would help police conducting a £4.5million review of the case.

Mr Murat, who was cleared as a suspect, said: “They need to start from the beginning.” So far the two-year review by more than 20 detectives in London has not led to a breakthrough.

Portugal’s authorities have not been persuaded to reopen the investigation, although Policia Judiciaria policewoman Helena Monteiro liaises regularly with officers from the Yard’s Operation Grange.

Mr Murat, 39, spoke to the Sunday Express while sipping tea in Casa ­Liliana, his elderly mother Jenny’s villa 150 yards from apartment 5a of the Ocean Club where Madeleine vanished.

He said: “They need to speak to everybody, including myself, and they need to get the Portuguese involved in a much more constructive way.

“To get somewhere now they need to have a joint team working here together in Praia da Luz. This is where it happened. It didn’t happen in England.

“The reconstruction should cover the critical period just before and after the abduction.”

Madeleine was three when she disappeared from the apartment at about 9.15pm while her parents Kate and Gerry McCann and seven friends ate at a tapas bar nearby. When the Judiciaria named the McCanns as suspects, they and their friends chose not to take part in a PJ-led reconstruction. It would be different now that they have been cleared, said Mr Murat.

He said: “A reconstruction is a real necessity. I am sure it would fill in some of the missing pieces of the jigsaw. Even now after all this time, the timeline is still confused.”

Thirteen days after Madeleine’s disappearance Mr Murat was named as a suspect. His mother’s home, where he lived then, was searched, his computers were taken, he was questioned for 19 hours by Portuguese police and his property business was wrecked.

His eagerness to help with the original investigation, helping police with translations, aroused a journalist’s suspicions. Three of the McCanns’ friends believed they saw him on the night Madeleine vanished but his mother confirmed to police he was with her all night at Casa Liliana.

After being cleared as a suspect in July 2008 he won substantial damages from newspapers.

Despite his ordeal he believes Madeleine’s fate should be uppermost in everybody’s minds as another anniversary passes.

He said: “You cannot lose sight of the fact that a child was taken and we need to know what happened to her.”

He is still willing to be interviewed by the review team, which has made no effort to contact him. “I have no problem with that whatsoever,” he said emphatically.

“I am available to help on the proper legal basis. I think everybody who was around at that time, holidaymakers and people at the Ocean Club, should be interviewed again. The timeline needs to be made crystal clear because there is still so much confusion, such a mess.” 

Madeleine aged three in Everton shirt

Asked if he thought Madeleine’s fate would ever be known, he brushed back his thick dark brown hair, rubbed his tanned chin and said: “I hope so, I believe it will come out one day.” He said Portugal’s financial crisis means “if the British do want to get to the bottom of this, it is a case of funding the Portuguese”.

Mr Murat, who grew up in Devon and Portugal, now has a young family with wife Michaela. They were both victims of the relentless media frenzy when Madeleine vanished and it has left its scars. For the first time during the interview he became emotional and said in a whisper: “There is no way to describe the impact this has had on our lives. Six years later it still affects me. I wasn’t able to do much for years and years.

“It was difficult getting back on the horse, so to speak, and do the stuff I was doing before.”

His property business went, partly because his computers were held by the PJ for so long, but now he has built up Newteq, an Apple-authorised service provider on the Algarve. He said he and Michaela live a quiet life, staying away from some events because people still come up to him and say: “You’re that Mr Murat.”

Before 2007 he says he was one of those people who was always eager to help others, to get involved in the community. Now he is more guarded.

When the original police investigation was at its height, he bumped into a British man, Steve Carpenter, who persuaded him to meet the McCanns because they needed his language skills. He said: “I met Gerry and said: ‘I don’t know what to say, there is nothing I can say but I do speak Portuguese and English and I will help in any way I can’.”

He helped Portugal’s GNR military officers to search the Ocean Club apartments and translated statements from key witnesses, giving him a unique inside perspective on the case.

He said: “From the experiences of the interviews there are some points that could be looked at.

“There needs to be much more transparency, much more openness to dissipate a lot of the stuff that has been talked about on the internet and on blogs.” 

He does not believe the results of the Yard’s work should be made available to the public.

“The Yard needs to get together with the Portuguese police and ­produce a final report,” he said. “They need to sit down together and come up with a final version, a structured report.

“The report should be done by the Portuguese with the support of the British.”

Last week Prime Minister David Cameron had a private meeting with the McCanns in London, promising them the review would not fall foul of budget cuts and giving them enough confidence to say on their website that they hope for a significant breakthrough in the months ahead.

On Friday night Kate and Gerry, both 45, gathered around a candle which burns night and day for Madeleine outside their home village of Rothley, Leicestershire. A 50-strong crowd supported them as they marked the anniversary with prayers with Madeleine’s ­siblings, eight-year-old twins Sean and Amelie.

Mr Murat said: “It must be a ­tremendously difficult time of year for them and of course as a human being you feel for them and for the loss of their daughter.

“At this time of year, like so many people on the Algarve, we have been thinking about this poor girl.

“I just hope in the months ahead the PJ are fully involved because in my view that is the best way of solving the mystery.”

At St Vincent’s church in Praia da Luz, where Kate and Gerry went regularly, worshippers also prayed for Madeleine, whose 10th birthday is on May 12.

Clarence Mitchell, the McCanns’ spokesman, declined to comment on Mr Murat’s views last night, saying the couple were happy with how Scotland Yard is conducting the review.