Portuguese police wanted to bug Madeleine’s parents

PORTUGUESE police wanted to bug the parents of Madeleine McCann but a judge refused to give permission, police case files have revealed.

Police wanted to bug Gerry and Kate McCann before making the couple “arguidos”, or formal suspects, last summer.

Files from the police investigation have revealed that on August 1 last year, detectives requested permission to place two bugs in the McCanns’ apartment in Praia da Luz and in their car.

But judge Pedro Frias refused to grant the order, saying the couple’s witness statements would be enough.

The McCanns’ arguido status was lifted on July 21.

A cluster of new leads in Holland and Belgium were yesterday being examined after Belgian police said they had received more than 100 reports of possible sightings of the youngster.

The sightings came after it was revealed a Scotland Yard informant suggested Madeleine was stolen to order by a Belgian paedophile gang.

Met sources said they did “everything possible” with the tip.

Artist sketches of a man and woman seen in an Amsterdam shop with a girl who identified herself as “Maddie” have also been released.

The pictures were drawn by a police artist on the evidence of Anna Stam, 41, who met a girl who looked like Madeleine.

The drawings, commissioned by the Daily Mirror, show a swarthy, dark-haired man with pencil moustache and short dark hair and a light brown-haired woman with thin lips.

A second Dutch sighting was also reported. Hannie Wiechmann, 71, called police after seeing a young child she believed to be the missing girl in Amsterdam in the second week of May last year.

Alain Remue, who heads the Belgian police missing persons unit, said about a third of the reported sightings in Belgium were from clairvoyants and another third lacked concrete information. About 30, however, they were able to investigate further.

He said officers had examined “every possible link” between the disappearance and the information they had received.

Belgian sightings recorded in Portuguese police files included one from Line Compere, 31, who told Belgian police she saw a blonde-haired, blue-eyed child who looked “very much” like Madeleine with an Eastern European couple on the number 18 tram heading towards the main Midi train station in Brussels on May 15 last year.

A British traveller contacted police after seeing a child asleep on a train from Brussels to Antwerp on May 27 last year and concluding she could have been drugged.

A girl looking strikingly like Madeleine was spotted in Mouscron, near the French border, accompanied by an English-speaking woman on June 2 last year.

A little girl with a “strong resemblance” to Madeleine was seen in a snack bar in Gooik, near Brussels, on June 8 with a known 33-year-old Portuguese man who lives in Amsterdam.