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A Portuguese air force helicopter flew
visiting Metropolitan Police officers
over the beachside resort of Praia da
Luz yesterday (Thursday, May 8) as the
seven-year investigation into the
disappearance of Madeleine McCann
cranked up several notches.
The Alouette III flight - paid for by
the British - was to enable officers
working on Operation Grange to take
aerial photos of “various points of
interest for future searches”.“The
objective was to see if there were areas
with uneven levels consistent with a
place where a body had been buried,”
writes Correio da Manhă in its latest
report.
Such photo-searches are considered
“essential” by the British police now
three years into their investigations
into the seven-year-old mystery.
Yesterday’s air reconnaissance took
place when the village of Luz was braced
for the prospect of earthmovers moving
in, added CM.
British tabloids began the week with
inflated stories of legions of diggers
being drafted in to search key sites
near the Ocean Club resort from which
Madeleine went missing in May 2007. The
result seems to be that the Portuguese
authorities have warned their British
counterparts to ‘zip it’.
Sky News reporter Martin Brunt said
yesterday that “the Portuguese
authorities have threatened to hold up
cooperation if British police talk about
the new phase of the investigation”.He
also intimated that new searches - far
from involving “diggers everywhere” -
are more likely to use police dogs and
ground-penetrating radar. However, when
these searches will start is anyone’s
guess.
As CM writes, “despite the latest
advance in investigations, it is not
certain that new developments will take
place in the next few days.”Meantime,
the visiting officers from the Met - led
by Chief Inspector Andy Redwood - are
due to leave Portugal sometime today.
This latest visit had been to discuss
Met requests on how Operation Grange
would like to advance in its
investigation. Officers are understood
to be keen to interview eight people of
various nationalities resident in the
Algarve, and there has been talk of them
wanting to search the homes of three
former employees of Luz Ocean Club.
The latter request is understood to have
been turned down, but as the PJ warning
on silence when it comes to the media is
now firmly in place, details are hazy.
In an insightful round-up of the latest
developments, journalist Len Port - who
has been covering the mystery since the
very day it began - remarks that the
terrain in Luz “in most of the
neighbourhood consists of limestone
bedrock”.“Even in patches of shallow
hard soil, how could an abductor have
buried a body, or any other material
evidence, unobserved and without tools?”
Port queries in his blog
algarvenewswatch. As the investigation
continues, we may at last be getting
closer to learning the truth of what
really happened to three-year-old
Madeleine McCann. |
